Volée
by VeroniqueClaire
Summary: Think of this as Down Once More, the extended, modernday, jet set remix. Gunshot wounds, fast cars, first class flights, FBI in pursuit but it's the quiet moments, the conversations, that leave Christine shaken. Hurtling towards her inevitable decision.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: For fans of The Necessary Part, my other story in progress, my apologies that I don't have another chapter for you just yet. This story came to me on a day of five airports, four connecting flights, and wondering how "Down Once More," would have gone in the modern day. And if Christine hadn't removed Erik's mask at the end of PONR. This is my first modernization, but I think you'll find that aside from things like cars and computers, our characters are very much the same. **

**A note on the title -- Volée is a french word (pronounced approx: "voh-laye") ...meaning both "stolen" and "flown." They're pronounced identically, and French speakers figure out which meaning is intended based on context. The story will be the context. :-)**

**--Ver**

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She saw her own hands rise up, and lift the cowl hood that concealed his identity.

The crowd gasped as his mask came into view, and the strains of Don Juan Triumphant squawked into silence as the orchestra members each ceased playing. The sound of instruments clattering to the floor registered in her ears.

He seemed immune to the sudden chaos, and instead tilted his head, sadly regarding her. He lay a hand across his chest and reached out towards her with the other, and for a moment she thought he meant to stroke his fingertips down her cheek... but he was reaching for the microphone wired into the collar of her dress. He took it between two fingers and snapped the head off, and when it hit the floor she saw his own microphone already there, frayed wires trailing.

So they were alone, now.

"I wish you hadn't done that," Erik said, angry and hurt, controlled and careful. He reached out again across the small space between them, his gloved hand hovering above her bicep, holding her in place without actually touching her. "But I could forgive you anything, if you would be my wife."

She stood, numbly staring at him, vaguely aware of the audience in chaos, of the slams as the police sealed each door leaving the theatre.

"I asked you before," he said, speaking more quickly, "and you didn't have an answer. Do you have one now?"

She could kill him with a few words. Or with a quick move of her wrist -- that was the plan, that was what she was supposed to do. Show the world his face and surely he would be paralysed by it. Keep him in place until they could cart him off to jail.

Raoul was watching, certainly, right now, waiting with the FBI agents who'd plotted her little role as bait for an alleged killer. Any kindness she showed Erik would crush Raoul. But to go through with their plan would shatter the man who stood raw and wounded before her. She... she couldn't. They couldn't make her. She...

"We don't have a lot of time," Erik said quickly, seriously, taking his eyes off her for a moment to regard the policemen moving up the aisles towards the stage, pushing upstream through the surge of fleeing audience members. "Please, Christine, say you want to leave with me." His voice, lifting, hopeful...

The policemen were only a few rows from the stage now, and she couldn't see Raoul, didn't know what he must think, didn't know what to do, didn't know what she wanted. Anything she said or did would hurt one of them, and her head hurt, and...

"I will do anything -- go anywhere, just say you'll come with me. I -- I want nothing -- nothing but you," and Erik's voice was breaking now, and she saw his eyes, pleading beneath the mask.

She inhaled shakily and tried to find her voice. "I..."

"Christine!" Raoul shouted, and a shot rang out. She whipped her head towards the sound of his voice and saw him standing in Box 5 with a rifle, and then she whirled back to see the path of his bullet. Erik dropped the hand that had been hovering above her arm, clamping his right arm over his left shoulder, and blood seeped down the shirtsleeve, beneath his fingers. The police rounded the corner of the stage and began tramping up the steps.

"Executive decision, then." Erik said determinedly, and let go of his wound to fling his good arm around her and draw her in, his forearm secure on the small of her back, pulling her flush against his chest and she gasped at the sudden contact. He clicked a remote of some kind in his left hand, explosions burst from each corner of the stage, and the floor dropped out beneath them.

She was choking as they fell, a mouthful of dry metallic smoke in her lungs and her stomach and her throat as she flailed, falling, terrified, twenty feet, more? Erik seemed to twist in midair and pull her down and then a solid resounding boom, whoosh, her ribs knocked into his and the air left her lungs and they landed, he on his back and her, dear god, on top of him, on some kind of quickly collapsing air cushion six feet tall.

Christine had no idea where she was, or where they were going and her chest hurt and her knee was twisted and Erik... Erik was staring at her with so much concern in his eyes . After she'd just spent weeks passively being dragged into a plan to betray him.

"Are you ok?" he asked, he implored, some mix of fear and care playing out across the uncovered half of his face.

"Yes," she said, tears forming and she didn't even bother wondering why, anymore.

"Good," he said, suddenly swift and focused. "We have to go." He rolled to the side, shifting out from beneath her with surprising deftness, sliding to the edge of the air cushion and standing. "The trap door should have shut behind us, but, we have about ten minutes before they find their way down here via the tunnels, less if they just blast through the trap door and jump as we did." As she scooted to the edge and stood, he eyed the mostly deflated cushion that had caught them. "Their landing might be less pleasant, though," he added with a sort of wry malice in his voice.

"Erik..." Christine said, her voice wavering, "What will happen to them?"

He began walking away, and she followed him without question, out of the strange basement room and down a poorly lit hallway.

"By 'them', I assume you mean your Viscomt?" he asked, with a mocking sharpness. "I daresay the same thing that happens to any man who jumps headfirst into something he knows nothing about. He'll break his neck." He looked at her pointedly, and she looked away from his gaze, her eyes falling upon the spreading redness on his shirt.

"Oh, your arm... oh!" she cried, and moved to look at it. He quickly pulled his left side away and stepped backwards, still walking quickly.

"Barely a surface wound." He reached the end of the hallway, opened the door, and a dark tunnel loomed ahead. He produced a flashlight from nowhere, and went on, "I could have cut myself deeper shaving my face. That is, if I --"

"Let me see it," she jumped in, hating his tone, worried about him and angry at him and how could Raoul have shot him?

"Christine, we have about six and a half minutes before there is an exceedingly unpleasant encounter between your young man and myself. He would not survive it. If you'd like to altogether avoid such an ugly tete-a-tete -- and I say that without irony -- I suggest that we run."

He stopped short as he said this, his voice acidic and deadly serious, echoing in the arched stone tunnel.

"You would kill him?" Christine said, aghast, somehow shocked, and yet stupidly, stupidly knowing she shouldn't be.

"You seem to inspire that impulse in men, my dear," he said dryly, and gestured at his own wounded arm. "And if you think I wouldn't kill to keep you, then you underestimate the depths of this -- of this feeling, in my chest, in my veins, even now -- and don't think I've forgotten about you cutting my opera short back there -- but, in spite of it all _I love you_. So I will try to refrain from any killing -- I know it would distress you -- but you should know that I am wholly capable of doing so."

"You give me no choice!" she cried angrily, throwing down her hands. "I must come with you, or stay and see you kill Raoul when he catches up to us. You asked me onstage to make a decision! As though I had some say in the matter. What would you have done if I had said no?"

For the first time, he looked tired, as he said, wretched and wistful, "I would have let you go. And I would have spent the rest of my life remembering that you treated me as a man."

How could he still look at her with such adoration? His expression hardened, though, and he went on, flippant and defensive again. "Yes, I would have remembered that for the rest of my life, however short that life might have been. You see, Christine, I have a rather lethal dose of morphine in my breast pocket. Among other things. Quite useful to travel with a small pharmacy on one's person."

"You would have killed yourself?" she whispered hollowly, horrified, not hearing the rest of his words. "You meant to let me go and then die if I chose to leave? Then why threaten to kill Raoul now?"

"Because... because you didn't choose to leave," he said, hesitantly, hopefully, his voice regaining its beauty, its seductive ability to surround her. "You've had several chances to choose, and yet you never do. If you detested me, Christine, if you loved that fool, you would have told me no. So, perhaps a change of scenery, the absence of 'distractions,' will help you make up your mind." He walked toward her, circling, slowly, his whole posture seeming to straighten and gain confidence until he was finally standing behind her, and then she heard him say, softly in her ear, "Perhaps you cannot say it yet -- but I believe you want to be mine. That you know you belong with me --"

She inhaled with such speed that she felt dizzy, startled by his proximity, by his words, by the warmth of his breath on her neck, overwhelmed by the events of the last quarter hour. She breathed out, "I... I don't know what I want..."

An explosion sounded from the hallway behind them, followed by distant shouts.

"Right, they'll be coming down the hatch now," he said with a bit of genuine levity in his voice. She could sense him, standing behind her, leaning closer, closer... and then he brushed by her. "You do distract me," he said, somewhere between lustful and fond, looking back at her to make contact with eyes flashing.

He ran up ahead, and she walked, dazedly, following, slowly. She turned left, right, left, left, following just a glimpse of him, a dash, his eyes imploring every time she slowed, other tunnels branching off all the while, explosive noises echoing out from behind her.

The tunnel turned a final corner, and a heavy metal grate blocked further progress. Erik walked up to a panel on the wall nearby and punched some beeping sequence of buttons, and the barrier slowly lifted. Striding through to the other side, he retrieved what looked to be... a rather nice carry on bag? ... stashed against the wall. He unzipped it quickly and withdrew a fitted black wool coat, giving it a good shake to unfurl it, then headed towards her.

"Your costume's lovely, but this will much less conspicuous," he murmured amusedly.

"Erik..." she paused mid-step, overcoming her first instinct to extend her arms and let him put the coat on her. "Where are we going?" Christine gestured at the carry on bag.

"Any one of the eight destinations we have tickets for, depending on when we get to the airport. We won't be at any of them for long," he replied loftily, holding out the coat.

"What will they think? When will we come home?" she said, suddenly feeling very small, and scared.

"I don't particularly care what anyone thinks, and we'll hopefully never come back here. You won't miss it. Let me show you..." and now, he seemed somewhat less confidant and somewhat more worried, more urgent.

But Christine stood, now, statuelike, feet planted, panic spiraling. She didn't want to hurt Erik, she didn't want to get Raoul killed, and she didn't want to feel like a hostage. She wanted to curl up and sleep and escape decisions indefinitely.

"Christine, we can talk about this later," Erik was calling to her, but she was numb, fixated, unable to answer, to decide, to do anything.

The echoing cries from down the tunnel grew louder, closer, more defined, and Erik reached over to the panel of buttons on the wall and lowered the steel grate again behind them.

"That will keep them from taking you, but they can still try to shoot me, and I can certainly still lasso that boy. Is that what you want?"

She shook her head wildly, throwing tears out of the corners of her eyes.

"Then come with me. You want to!" he said emphatically, as though he were striving to convince them both. "It would not be so terrible..." and here, he looked distinctly uncomfortable, the exposed half of his face wincing, as he said, quickly, all in a rush, "I would not make you do anything you did not wish to... A bit of travel and then we can stay somewhere, and you can sing, and I can be happy -- just being where you are, I would be happy -- caring for you -- and perhaps, perhaps you --" and his voice cracked choking emotion, wet eyes looking at her.

"Dammit, just find her!" came a clear shout from down the hallway, Raoul's voice rising above the others, ever closer.

"I don't want to hurt anyone!" she finally said in a helpless whisper.

He studied her for a moment, then walked towards her with the coat, sliding it on her right arm, and walking around behind her to help with the other side. He took her left hand in his, and, looking down as he guided it towards the sleeve, took a deep breath and said, "Forgive me, then, if I hurt you."

The movement was so swift, she didn't even have time to startle, just to stare as his hand slid up to grip her forearm, and he reached into his pocket, something plastic in his grasp, then a cold pinch in the crook of her elbow, a plunge into her veins, stars in her eyes and then she was falling forwards, towards him, into darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Tumbling forward, strange, starry images, and she couldn't quite open her eyes, or remember what had happened before. Dizzy, and dark.

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Christine lolled awake slowly, pulled out of syrupy unconsciousness, gradually aware as centripetal force threw her body out on a swift turn left, the seat belt catching her before she hit the door, passenger side, and dropping her back into the dark leather seat. Her limbs felt painless, lovely weightless, and she slumped a bit, sliding lower in the chair. Her head rolled to the side, so much easier than staying upright, and when her eyes made their way up, she saw streetlights blurrily swirling above her in the moonroof, glimmering as they slid by. The lights seemed brighter, their glow extended, some sparkle like nothing she'd ever known, beautiful.

The engine revved higher, and dropped, then higher still, and dropped again, growing, roaring, the car seeming to leap forward, and her head fell down, her chin too heavy to lift. Christine struggled, blinking, to make her eyes focus... blurry, in, out... she blinked, and concentrated, on the fuzzy shapes before her... a gloved hand on the gearshift, pulling it swiftly down. Erik's hand... Erik... and she looked up, over, and he was there, mask on, hat on, eyes on the road, serious.

The car, the same black luxury Phaeton he always drove? ...it dropped into a higher gear again, and surely they were going very, very fast now... she recalled something he'd said once about 12 cylinders and embarassing gas mileage... and bulletproof tinted windows. And now, focused a bit more, she wondered about where they were driving so quickly, and if they were being followed... Raoul, Agent Kahn, the police? The opera house seemed years behind her.

The car veered right, sharply, Erik spinning the wheel and pulling up on the parking brake, then dropping it, straightening the car, and accelerating with such speed that they flew forward. It pressed her into the seat, backwards, into the embrace of the leather cushions, her head pushed back, and she slipped into sleep again.

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Christine wanted to dance, or, possibly, to dream like this, dark and weightless, forever. She staggered, leaning forward, as far as she could sway on tip toes, diving into the supporting dark before her, caught each time. Erik's voice intruded, gently, she must stand up, stand still, just for one moment, darling.

And then clearly, with false joviality, she heard him say, "It's my fault entirely, you'll have to pardon me -- I do believe I poured one too many glasses of champagne for my bride at the reception!"

She curtsied like a lady, because it seemed the thing to do, and found herself giggling furtively. Everything around her was unfrightening but meaningless; she saw shapes and people without really seeing them. She rose out of her curtsy into relevé, third position, and thought for a moment that she might like to try a jeté or two -- she hadn't danced much, not since she'd left the corps de ballet for her career of singing. And weeping. And talking to FBI agents. And feeling guilty.

She closed her eyes again, and it was better. She thought again to try her grand jeté, so she stepped forward, and started to raise her arms... only to feel hands bring them down by her sides, then an arm holding them there, supporting around her waist, walking forward, quickly.

"Later, angel, you can dance, I promise you. Just not right now..." Erik's voice whispered in her ear. She heard the words, but her mind was already dancing again on its own, soaring, black starbursts before her eyes...

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...and oh, god, her head hurt. She felt his hand brush the hair off her face and tuck it behind one ear, and he said, softly, "Drink this." An Evian bottle pressed to her lips, and she tried to swallow but her throat burned, scratched, it hurt and she gasped.

"Please..." Erik whispered, "You're dehydrated. You will feel ill if you don't..." and she drank, despite the mild sting, because at least he knew what was happening.

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Darker still. Each bob of her head a shadowy fireworks display., refracted and recursive. Each time her mind spun it seemed to amplify, the world spinning within itself.

Then there was nothing, for a while.

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The dull roar filled her ears.

It was all around her head, like a fierce noise heard from far away... or like a blow dryer in the next room. Something was hissing, closer, air blowing.

The hangover-like headache was mostly gone, but her mind felt strangely empty. She couldn't remember -- couldn't get her eyes open for more than half a second at a time, then they'd fall shut again. Everywhere she'd been, she couldn't remember how she'd gotten there or where she'd been before, each place bluring into the next as she tried to sequence them.

Before now was a blur. But what about now?

She was lying down. She was bound -- no, it was a seat belt. She felt the buckle, under her folded hands. Her fingers crept out, feeling a soft blanket over her. Erik had kept a cashmere throw in the car for her, said he couldn't chance the air conditioning harming her throat. Sometimes Christine wondered if he kept it there because he enjoyed cosseting her in it, wrapping the blanket around her as a substitute for his arms... but she recognized, it was the same blanket, she knew the familiar softness beneath her fingers, and she clenched it in her fists, as if to anchor herself in the awake and the here.

She opened her eyes -- focusing was easier now, though the ceiling was further away than she expected. It took her a minute to make out the words illuminated there.

"Fasten Seat Belts. No Smoking."

And she panicked, her fingers grappling for the buckle on the seat belt, trying to get up, her feet kicking the blanket off her, hands finally finding the release mechanism on the safety belt. She sat up and pressed her face to the airplane window to her right, but saw nothing but a midnight sky, stars, clouds below her. She fell, stunned, back into her seat, desperately trying to remember. Looking around, she appeared to be in a small room, perhaps three times the size of her fully reclined seat, almost like a private car on a train. There was a low wall to her left, separating her from the other half of the room, and it, like everything around her, was polished wood, sleek, like the interior of a luxury vehicle, and not at all like the airplanes she'd ever been in.

Christine fought a trapped, frantic desire to pound on the walls and find her way out.

Taking a deep breath, she swung her legs to the side, looking down and noticing for the first time that she still wore the coat, and her costume from Don Juan beneath it... and soft blue slippers upon her feet. The black boots she'd been wearing earlier were set neatly on the floor, and she felt strangely uncomfortable, tended to, helpless.

She stood, and eyed the low wall. It seemed to split in the middle, surely this was the way out... and then looked back over her shoulder, down at the armrest of her chair. Among a myriad of other buttons, she located one with two arrows pointing in opposite directions, and pressed it. The two halves of the wall began to slide back and recede into the wall, and she turned to leave -- and found herself staring at Erik's shirtfront.

Christine fell back, leaning against her chair, for support and he stepped forward, his hands hovering near her face, as though he were about to embrace her -- or cover her mouth. He said in an urgent whisper. "Please... please don't scream."

Her eyes widened as she realized he wasn't wearing his white porcelin half mask... but rather some sort of thin, flesh-toned rubber, pressed to his skin as though it were pasted there, rather like a large, contoured band-aid.

She was furious, and powerless, and utterly confused, and she cholked back tears and the desire to pound her fists into his chest and finally clenched both hands with her arms by her side and assaulted him with words. "What is going on?" she hissed. "Where are we going? How did I get here? And what -- what are you wearing..." she saw him gathering his breath, preparing to reply gently, and she felt a rush of sympathy. And then remembered, and looked down at her left arm, and noticed the feeling of soreness inside her elbow. "You drugged me," she said, low and accusing, and more angry than she'd ever been.

"Forgive me..." were his first words, sorrowful, his eyes meeting hers, showing genuine regret.

"No." She said, flatly, raising her voice.

"Please, Christine," he said delicately, "I know you are angry, and have right to be... but, I implore you, please don't shout. We have some privacy here," and he gestured at the room, containing her seat, his, and, she noticed, a door beyond it. "But the walls are not soundproof."

"Then bringing me here as a captive seems like poor planning," she retorted.

"I was hoping to bring you as --" and Erik paused, just a second, and she couldn't tell whether it was sadness or embarassment flashing across his face. "As a companion," he finished. "This is a first class suite on a commercial airliner, not a prison cell. I know -- I know you didn't choose to come here, but I had rather hoped you would like it. Every step of this was planned with your comfort in mind. You know there is nothing I wouldn't do for you."

"You wouldn't let me make up my own mind! You didn't do that for me!" she whispered angrily.

"You didn't exactly allow me the chance to ask you over champagne after my opera's first performance." His tone hardened, somewhat, controlled anger lingering in his voice. "You set this in motion, Christine, when you revealed onstage my little cast substitution. And long before that, when you met with the FBI agents."

She winced, and he went on.

"You continually failed to give me an answer, and yet you continued to visit me, to call for me, to say you only lived during our lessons. And then you let yourself be led into some sort of play engagement when that boy suggested it, and then he started making your decisions for you. Can you blame me for appropriating his methods? They seemed to work." He looked at her with wounded eyes. "I would have loved to ask you to run away with me in some boring, civilized way. Like a normal man."

"Normal men don't bring suicide doses or date rape drugs in case things don't work out the way that they'd like," she threw at him, her fury fading and frustration growing, but as soon as the words left her mouth she regretted them.

He stepped backward, away from her, his face fallen into a look of horrified shock, the thin, flesh-toned mask drooping. When his voice came, it was thick and low, as though he was struggling to speak over a lump in his throat. "I would never... You cannot possibly think...

Strange how quickly guilt could replace her very rightful anger. She pulled at the collar of the coat, wrapping it tighter around her, uncomfortable and uncertain what to say. "Even if I trust you, how am I to know? You took me here against my will. I've been unconscious for hours. I don't know anything!"

"You know me..." he said hoarsely. "As much as a girl can know a dangerous madman, I suppose... But I had thought, after all this time, you would trust me. That you would have some faith in -- in the way I feel about you. I know -- I know my face frightens you, I know it's monstrous. How could you think I would -- I would -- force myself upon you, when I know it repulses you just to take my hand?" His voice was hollow, and grief-stricken at once. "How could you think that?"

His whole posture seemed to draw inward, his words revealing his confidence shattered, and Christine fought a deep, visceral desire to cradle his head in her arms. As if a bit of comfort could cure him, could take back her words and his actions. And she couldn't answer his question.

"It doesn't repulse me to take your hand." Christine finally said, tired and sad.

He looked at her hesitantly, shoulders raised as though in the midst of a silent sob.

"But," she went on, "You forced me to be here. You took away my -- my awareness, my ability to choose, or even to know where I am." Hurriedly, impassioned, she pushed the coat off of her and held her arm out for him to see. "You did this to me."

Erik dropped to his knees before her, and she thought he was about to ask forgiveness, but his eyes didn't raise to meet hers. Instead he looked at her arm, at the inside of her left elbow, at the faint bruise like a blue fingerprint pressed there. His hands gestured for her to show him, to turn her arm to one side, and then the other, directing her movement without ever touching her, like a cross between a doctor and a ghost.

"I broke your skin," he said, raggedlly, "for that alone I deserve death."

"Stop..." she said wearily. But the tirade of self-loathing that she expected didn't come; he straightened his shoulders, rose up slightly on one leg, and looked up at her.

"I'm sorry about the drugs," he said flatly. "But I had little time and fewer options, and I _cannot_ lose you. Not unless you tell me, honestly, that you don't want me -- that you could never care for me. Until you tell me that you really love that boy, and that you're not just going along with his plan. I won't let you be taken as some nobleman's wife just because you couldn't make a decision about whether or not you wanted to be mine."

His body language belied his hard words; he was lecturing her, but he was still before her on one knee, eyes pleading, and Christine knew he was asking her, again, laying his heart before her. She could say 'yes,' right here, and he would know happiness.

She didn't even know where "here" was.

"What was it?" she asked, and on his questioning glance, continued, "What was it in the syringe?"

He sighed lowly, and rose to his feet, to return to sitting perpendicular to the chair, facing her. "Sodium thiopental. Surgical grade anesthesia to induce unconsciousness, followed by a low dose of gamma-hydroxybutyrate to sustain it and sedate you on the way here. I'm sorry."

She looked at him, trying to see through his clincical tone, trying to judge whether he genuinely regretted taking her by force, or just that he'd hurt her in the process. "Where are we?"

"On an airplane," and here a touch of amusement crept into his voice. " I did mention that earlier. But specifically? Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. We're on Emirates flight 202, JFK to Dubai."

He paused, as her jaw dropped, before venturing, "I was rather glad that the timing worked out the way that it did -- this was the most comfortable of our options. Emirates operates arguably the finest, and certainly the most private commercial first class cabin in the world. I suppose all those oil barons are even more reclusive than I."

The pride in his words was unmistakable -- he spoke with the same tone she'd heard a hundred times before, every time he gave her a gift and explained why it was superior to others of its kind. Books, but only a first edition. Jewelry, but the diamonds had to be from a mine not staffed by slaves. Yves Saint Laurent shoes, but only the Tom Ford era. He could not think himself handsome, so he surrounded himself with handsome things to have pride in. And he wanted to give them all to her. She felt like some unworthy god receiving sacrifices on an alter.

She blinked and returned to the present. Simple questions; good for the sanity, fantastic for avoidance. "What will we do in Dubai?"

"Get on an airplane," he replied, still amused. "We'll need to keep moving for the first 36 to 48 hours, depending on how good their attempts to follow us are. A good 6 or 7 hops should be sufficiently hard to track, especially since they were all purchased under different names and credit cards. I've brought a lovely assortment of passports and wigs."

He paused, waiting for her to laugh, and then went on quickly when she didn't. "At some point we stop the rapid flight, and slow our pace. A week here, ten days there, city to city. When they're sufficiently thrown off trail, and when the story is old enough that we're not immediately recognizable from the front page stories, I'll find someplace for us to settle longer term."

She stared at him. "What if I don't want to? To go along without any say about anything? What if I actually wanted to be back in New York with Raoul?"

He eyed her for a minute, seeming to appraise her words, and whether or not they were hypothetical. "If you wanted to, you would say so. Do so. And judging by your actions, I'd say that you seem to want someone else to control your destiny right now. I'd simply rather it be me than that boy."

His words frustrated her, worried her, and yet she couldn't think of a response.

Simple questions, still good for the sanity.

"Won't they just see who bought the tickets?" she asked.

"Even if they do follow the financial trail through the pseudonyms, I've reserved several flights from each destination. My first instinct was to charter a private plane, but that attracts far more attention. Much easier for us to simply vanish in plain sight."

He waited, for a moment, but she said nothing, and he went on, seeming to try and fill the silence, "I suppose to truly blend in we ought to travel in coach, but, even with this mask -- I can tell you wanted to ask about it. It's ridiculous, really, up close, just a thick layer of latex glued to the skin. It hurts, and it's terrible, but it attracts so little attention -- even with this mask, I can only pass as normal from a distance. So it's best if we're in sparsely populated cabins where half the occupants are wearing silken eyemasks and sleeping in a haze of complimentary drinks anyway. Three cheers for first class."

Erik said the last words wryly, but the hesitant look quickly returned to what she could see of his face. He was waiting for her to argue or sympathize, and she had nothing. Nothing left to say, and no feelings she could easily identify.

"I..." she began, finding her voice suddenly dry, some sort of lump in her throat. "I have to go to the bathroom."

He stood, and looked down at her with an expression she couldn't quite read, something hesitant, and almost worried. Finally, he gestured with his left hand, sweeping it wide. "The door's right there," he said. "Restrooms are up at the front of the cabin. If you'd like dinner, just ask the flight attendant and she'll bring it by the suite."

And it was with the last sentence that Christine could tell, he was terrified. She wouldn't even have to scream for help. She could just quietly tell a flight attendant that she'd been kidnapped. There were probably even air marshals on the flight -- Erik wasn't a terrorist, but she was certain they'd be happy to cuff him right there on the plane, save the day and rescue the captive.

If she was indeed a captive.

"You control the entry like this," he said, pushing another one of the buttons on her armrest.

A portion of the outer wall slid back, smoothly, mechanized, and Christine stared at the open door.

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**Author's note: Whew, that was supposed to be two chapters, but it wound up being one big one. I'm still lacking a beta, so, I'm quite open to feedback about the flow of this, and really anything in general. **

**In this chapter, I took a few liberties -- with the exact effects of the drugs (though they're not far off), and also with the exact configuration of the first class cabins on Emirates airlines planes. Generally the two-person cabins are in the middle, and far less secluded, and the most private cabins along the wall are single-seat only. However, I wanted Christine to have a window to look out of, so, forgive me a bit of artistic license. The flight number's correct, though. ;)**

**--Ver**


	3. Chapter 3

The weight of his regard was a pressure, nearly tangible, like a hand resting on her back.

And she knew Erik was waiting for her to betray him, or to buy in to his version of this scenario. The abductee would scream for help; the happy companion would simply go to the restroom, tell the flight attendant that yes, the cheese plate would be lovely, and then stroll back to the comfort of the suite, to the man who would be content just to...

He was still looking at her. He'd probably be happy just to look at her forever, she thought, and then her cheeks pricked with shame because she knew he shouldn't have to be.

"Ok," she said, trying to move on, but her voice seemed to come from outside her head, her words too normal for a day so strange. "Dinner might be good. It's been... How long has it been since lunch?"

"Since noon EST? About 18 hours," and here, he looked guilty, having apparently overlooked his detail. "You should definitely eat."

"Probably," she said, somehow still hesitant, eyeing the door. She took two steps towards it and looked back, over her shoulder. "Do you want anything?"

Christine met his eyes and bit her lip at the raw longing so obvious there. Stupid question, stupid girl, she berated herself silently.

"Probably not anything the flight attendant can bring me," he said, finally, his tone tinged with a bit of bitter humor, the sort of self deprecation that normally comes with saying one is absolutely, utterly, and completely screwed.

Her heart shouldn't wrench like this; she was angry with him, Erik had kidnapped her, he'd threatened Raoul, he'd offered up his own heart on a platter a hundred times...

"Ok," she said hurriedly, uncomfortably, and walked out of the suite.

White lights lead to red lights as she looked down the aisle, tracklights along the floor for emergency guidance and Christine thought she'd actually know better what to do if she were clutching her floation-use seat cushion and trudging towards an open door over the ocean. Aside from the rows of doors instead of seats, it looked just like a normal airplane. So the bathroom was probably at the front. She squared her shoulders and started to walk towards it.

"Wait," Erik's voice was filled with some sort of urgent _need_, it filled her ear so fully that she thought he must be standing right behind her... but when she turned, he was standing just inside the door to the suite. She'd never gotten used to his ventriloquy...

"This might be useful, if you want to change, or -- if you need to -- if you want to, that is -- freshen up," and he quickly thrust forward a small rolling suitcase, trying to cover for the awkward words.

"You packed my things?"

"Actually, I just bought you new ones." His words were flippant, but they couldn't cover his tone, so earnest. "And I remembered your -- disaffection, I think, is safe to say -- for the shopgirls at Bergdorf Goodman, so I sent to London for these. Hopefully Harvey Nichols will suit?"

Christine couldn't meet his eyes. He was waiting for the answer to his question, searching for some faint bit of praise in her answering, "of course," but she -- she couldn't -- she --

"The things you buy are always lovely... even if I don't always deserve them," Christine said, deliberately, demurely, de-- lost, just lost, and so very tired. "Thank you." And with lowered eyes, she took the suitcase, and quickly strode up the aisle towards the restroom before she could say anything else.

Past the rows of suite doors she found a small standing area, and several lavatories, each marked as unoccupied by a small light, glowing green behind panels of futuristic milky glass. Christine stepped into the first one and swiftly shut the door behind her. She turned the lock, slid the coat off her shoulders, and then, somewhat less burdened, turned herself and fell back against the door, feeling it solid beneath her shoulderblades, head in her hands, exhausted and lost.

But tears didn't come and neither did the feeling of having escaped. She should find a flight attendant, ask for help -- she should find an airphone, surely they still had those, didn't they? Insert her credit card and pull the phone out of the wall, call Raoul and tell him... tell him what, really? That she was alive and well and at this very moment not screaming for help because she was...

She didn't even have a credit card, she realized, her purse was probably still back in her dressing room. She lowered her hands from her eyes, and for the first time, looked around. It was unsurprisingly larger and luxer than an average airplane restroom, sleek marble where she would have expected formica. Christine caught sight of herself in the mirror and a laugh, nervous and strange, escaped her mouth as she noticed again that she was still wearing Aminta's costume. She clapped a hand over her lips and stared at herself for a second, then shook her head and went about opening the suitcase.

It was like opening a shopping bag. Each item flattened, wrapped in tissue, tags still attached with the price carefully snipped off. Brands she recognized from runway photos in magazines, and brands she'd never heard of that were probably twice as expensive, each in the right size, a perfect assortment of pieces to wear and recombine in almost any weather, so that she might be comfortable and stylish indefinitely. And she couldn't decide what she thought about that, so she set about opening the suitcase's other compartments.

She felt a row of hard plastic lumps, and unzipped the side pocket to reveal a row of five sunglass cases. They cracked open like resealable eggs, with a different style of glasses in each -- sage-tinted aviators, gigantic black Jackie O frames, quick-change identities for a woman on the lam in some modern day film noir. She unzipped the mesh pocket on the suitcase's lid and found several sets of practical but silky and pretty bras and underwear and suddenly felt uncomfortable -- even if some shopgirl in London had picked them out, he... he -- Erik had folded these bits of satin and put them in the suitcase, thinking that he'd probably never see them again. Or perhaps hoping that he would.

Christine slammed the suitcase shut and whirled to sit on it, drawing her knees up to her chest, hands in fists against her shins. She knew she should not feel guilty; that Erik enjoyed buying this for her, and that he knew he wasn't ever going to be able to buy _her_. She should not feel guilty -- and yet anger at herself flared, because didn't he deserve some greater happiness than just having someone who would reluctantly accept his gifts? He deserved some full fledged woman who knew full well that she _wanted_ to be on this plane, but she -- she deserved to not be dragged off by force and -- and --

"Dammit!" she choked out, throwing her right fist down and back, against the door she leaned on. Pain lanced through her wrist, through her curled pinky finger as it slammed into the door. It felt like relief, and she turned her arm and bent her fist back, exposing the veins as she beat her inner wrist against the wall, muttering "Dammit, dammit, god dammit." She couldn't stop the frustrated tears, but each burst of pain was under her own control. Her shoulders shook, and she felt so angry and helpless.

A businesslike rap sounded on the door, and she drew in a startled breath.

"Excuse me, Miss?" A female voice, faintly accented but polite and dignified. "Are you unwell? Do you need any assistance?"

Christine slowly let out her breath, and replied, "No, I'm quite all right. Just having a bit of trouble with the zipper on my suitcase." How easily the lie leapt to her lips...

"If you do require any help, be certain to push the orange call button and one of us would be glad to assist," the voice came again, professional and routine, and then Christine heard footsteps retreating.

She breathed relief, and was unsure why; she didn't necessarily want to be a prisoner , but she didn't want to see Erik in jail, and she certainly didn't want Raoul and Agent Kahn to catch up to them if it meant Erik would kill Raoul. She knew exactly what she didn't want and had no idea what she did.

Another deep breath, and she stood, trying to return her head, her heartbeat to normal. The mirror above the sink now showed a girl with red eyes and mascara smears. She bent to open the suitcase again, wondering if he'd truly anticipated everything. A tiny train case in light green leather contained a small assortment of makeup, eyemakeup remover, and an italian skin care line in perfect white plastic travel sizes. Of course. She washed her face, grimacing as she splashed the bodice of her costume from Don Juan, and she decided she'd probably been dressed as Aminta long enough.

Christine stared at the options in the suitcase for a while, thinking too thoroughly which message each choice could send, and not really knowing what the weather would be like... well, wherever it was that they would end up. Though it certainly sounded like they'd be in airports for a while. Layers seemed the wisest approach, and so she finally selected a pair of dark jeans, a grey cashmere camisole, and a whispy ivory silk tuxedo shirt half-buttoned and belted over it. She took out the largest of the purses from the bottom of the suitcase, a bunchy black leather bag with woven handles, and put lipstick, hairbrush, and a drapey blue sweater inside.

The heavy wool coat still sat rumbled on the floor, and she looked at it angrily, remembering the last time she'd rather unwillingly put it on. It was too warm to wear indoors anyway, she thought, and again with the not dealing, she folded it, flattened it, folded again and pushed it into the suitcase. Her costume from Don Juan, though, would definitely not fit. Finally she just bunched it up and put it under her arm, crushing the petticoats down as best she could, and figured she'd ask Erik what to do with it -- he'd had a plan for everything else. Whereas she... she reached into the suitcase, and found the square leather case that hid the biggest and roundest of the sunglasses, tossed them into the purse, pushed down the lid of the suitcase, zipped it shut, and without looking, thinking, any of it, any more, turned the lock, opened the door and re-entered the world.

The steady low blowing roar filled her ears again, the airplane noise making the emptiness of the nightlight-lit room seem more surreal. Every airplane she'd been on before had been full of people; babies crying, flight attendants pushing drink carts, smokers pacing at several hours without nicotine... suddenly taking up smoking sounded like a really nice idea. Little sticks filled with artificial calm, take one out whenever you need it, and get a few breaths closer to death. Not to mention what it would do for her voice -- Erik would absolutely kill her. But Christine wondered, hazily, if he would still love her -- if she couldn't sing, if she were just whatever part of her was left, when you took away the voice, and...

A footstep sounded behind her, and she whirled around.

A petite, dark haired woman in a khaki uniform with a red hat and white scarf stood there, holding a tray with a coffeepot and cups. "Can I help you, miss?" she said, in the same reserved, polite voice Christine had heard through the door earlier. Christine stared at her dumbly -- somehow still surprised to find someone other than Erik and herself existing on this airplane. It seemed so strange that this woman was just having another day at work, her hair in a perfect chinigon, uniform in order, bringing coffee to the billionaires in their tiny suites six miles above the earth, while Christine was a vanished woman in strange clothes who'd just come off of heavy drugs.

And then, of course, Christine realized it must be stranger still that she herself was standing there unspeaking and finally said, in a rush, "Food? I mean, dinner? Could you bring it to my... our... seats?"

The flight attendant nodded. "Of course. I'll bring the menus to your suite shortly." She started to turn, and then looked back, eyeing the bundle of tulle and brocade that Christine held. "Was everything all right with your suitcase?" Her tone spoke more of deliberate politeness than genuine concern, but even through the formality of her question, Christine sensed a tinge of ... suspicion?

"It's fine now, thanks," Christine said, caught offguard. She smiled unconvincingly, and spun on her heel to walk away.

The doors in the hallway all looked the same, and she hesitated, trying to remember how far she'd come up the aisle. She stood in front of the third door from the front, took a deep breath, and pushed the button to open the doors.

Erik was sitting down, turned away from the door, staring over his right shoulder at the night sky outside the window. His chin rested against a loose fist, and there -- in profile, in a charcoal blazer and a white dress shirt -- he looked like an average business traveler. A well-dressed but ordinary man. He shifted his gaze towards her, slightly, raising an eyebrow without raising his head.

"I thought perhaps you'd found a parachute and an escape hatch," he said in a murmur so wry it was brittle, fragile.

"I found dinner," Christine spoke, gently, leaning against the doorway. "Or the promise of dinner, at least. Sorry it took so long... I had a hard time picking out what to wear."

"That's nice of you to say," he replied, as if she were lying to spare his feelings and had genuinely been looking for an escape route. He turned towards her fully, the mask now visible, and gestured at the door. She stepped in to stow the suitcase and costume behind her seat, and he pressed the button to close the door and seal them away from the world again.

Her seat belt sounded loud when she buckled it, in the sudden silence that had fallen over the suite. Erik was acting withdrawn, and she was drained, and both of them seemed to have the sort of relief without peace that she normally found after a few hours straight of crying. Christine felt like she was all out of emotions, synapses too burnt out to fire, or something similar going on in her head.

"You look lovely," he finally ventured, looking down, as though he didn't have the right to say it.

"I look tired," she replied, as if there was any use in contradicting him.

"If you want to sleep, after dinner, you can," Erik said, "I'll take care of everything."

And Christine said, "I know."

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Dinner came on dollhouse plates, the tinyness making each course seem all the more gourmet. The flight attendant brought the dishes almost wordlessly, her inquisitiveness seemingly abated.

Christine ate, and felt better. Erik declined the meal.

She didn't know if she'd be able to sleep. But she sat, eyes closed, and tried not to think.

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The airplane began to point subtly downward, a slow shift she noticed in her half awake state without thinking about it, until the captain came on the loudspeaker, announcing in three languages that they'd be landing soon. She opened her eyes a bit, and looked at the window, at ocean and perfectly shaped islands below, still far away.

"Christine..." Erik's voice pulled her back from the window. "We'll need to be ready, when we land."

"Ready for what?" she said, trying to read his eyes beneath the fleshtone mask.

"Ready to run," was his matter-of-fact reply. Erik removed another rolling carry-on from beneath his own seat. He opened it, and Christine leaned over to peer in, feeling somewhat nosy. Looking over his shoulder as he rummaged in it, she saw what looked like a few dress shirts and slacks, several dozen large mesh zipper bags in various colors, and --

He snapped the suitcase shut after pulling out one of the mesh bags in yellow, and unzipped the bag to reveal a plaid short-brim fedora, a pageboy-cut hazel brown wig, and two passports. "I think we'll start by being British," he said, "and attempt more complex endeavors only if they're needed."

"I... don't really understand." Christine said, realizing that he hadn't been joking about having a bag of alter egos handy.

"I can speak Russian in a pinch, but my accent's absolute rubbish," he said, bemused, his voice suddenly that of a Londoner, perfectly accented, subtle but unquestionably acceptable as genuine. Almost like a vocal mask, she thought, noting how easily he slipped it on.

He seemed to wait for her to laugh, and then, disappointed, went on, quickly, in his own voice and businesslike again. "You'll need to put on the wig here in the suite, and put the scarf over it -- we can't have the flight crew seeing you leave with a different hair color. In the jetway, you'll take the scarf off -- as we're walking, no stopping -- and before we get to the terminal, put on sunglasses. You'll need to get those out of the suitcase --"

"I put a pair in the purse," Christine said, gesturing at the handbag.

He paused at her interruption, and tilted his head towards her. "Good girl," he said, his voice surprised, approving and Christine wanted to lean into it for a moment, to close her eyes and relish the praise, like she did during her lessons so long ago, hours of singing to finally get a faint compliment from the voice behind her mirror...

"Now, this part is important: We're not going to be able to avoid clearing customs. There are a few airports, poorly designed, where it's possible to sidestep the agents by not leaving the airport and just getting on the next flight -- but we've got more to lose by being caught doing something different. Today's passports are good, they'll even swipe fine. Later on, well, we'll deal with that then."

She wanted to ask what that meant, but he went on, lecturing almost, his voice growing confidant:

"We're here for vacation -- every time, that's the answer, no matter which country we've arrived in. I'll try not to land us in Syria, it wouldn't be too believable this time of year. But even so: 'Business or pleasure?' Say pleasure. 'Pour raisons personnelless ou professionnelles?' Toujours, 'personnelles. Sur les vacances...' The wealthy do the damnest things for vacation, and that will help us cover for much of this... But you won't need to speak unless they demand it. I can take care of all the talking."

"Ok, Christine said, trying to remember everything, suddenly worried that she'd mess it up, let him down, ignoring the little voice in her head suggesting that "Help, I've been kidnapped," would be universally understood were she to shout it.

Erik glanced out the window. "You should put the wig on now. There are hairpins to hold it in place."

She nodded, and picked it up, trying to pull it on like a ski cap, but her hair slipped out. She spent a few more minutes pushing and tucking hair up under it unsuccessfully, then took the wig off and tried to put her own hair in a bun first, but couldn't get it under the wig. Finally, frustrated, unthinking, she asked, "Do you have a mirror?"

"I don't have much use for them," came his quick, almost disdainful reply, but his voice relented as he went on to say, "But if you'd like, I can have --"

"Could you help me?" Christine interrupted, surprised at how childlike she sounded.

He was startled, and when he finally spoke, his voice cracked, as though there were not enough oxygen in the room. "If you wish," he said.

She passed him the wig and looked at the floor, trying to concentrate on the task at hand, again trying to pin up her own hair. She managed a loose coil at the back of her neck and pinned it. Then, heart thudding, Christine looked over and nodded at him. He rose out of his seat, and closed the few steps between them. She couldn't read his face as he lifted the wig over her head -- momentarily encircling her neck with his arms -- and scooped the wig under the twist of her real hair, stretching it and pulling it over, down to her forehead, inches away from her at all times, yet all without actually ever touching her.

Christine closed her eyes.

His breathing sounded fluttery, ragged. He spread the fingers of both his hands, and placed their gloved surfaces along her skull, slowly pushing the wig forward, adjusting it up, closer to the hairline, and the ten points of pressure on her head felt like... she didn't know what they felt like. He was touching her -- through his leather gloves, through a layer of fake hair, and then she felt his fingertips brush her ear, tucking a few wisps of hair into the wig, putting a few bobby pins in to secure it. And when she opened her eyes he was looking just over her, actually, focused on her forehead. Finally he seemed to have it settled and made eye contact.

"That should work," he said distantly, but made no motion to step away from her. And so she stood, and he stood, inches apart, unmoving. He took a hesitant breath, released it, and then took a deep one, and she could see the new mask wrinkle as he opened his mouth to speak...

A bell sounded, and the seatbelt lights flashed, and he appeared to think better of whatever he was going to say, silently returning to his seat for the landing.

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Christine could tell the instant the wheels touched the ground, a few bumps and suddenly the seat beneath her felt more solid, followed by the almost maddeningly slow roll of the airplane to the gate. Finally the plane halted, and the light behind the seat belt sign went out with a chime. She looked at Erik -- expecting him to grab the bags, and her, and bolt -- but he sat still, hands crossed in his lap, until he noticed her staring and then absently unbuckled his seatbelt, and stood to gather the baggage, without a word. Somewhat baffled, she slung the purse over her shoulder, and reached below her seat to pull out her carry-on. She put her boots from her costume back on, pulling the jeans down to cover their length, and then turned to ask Erik about what to do with Aminta's dress, but he was already gathering it up, putting it into what appeared to be a large mailing envelope.

"It's an rather easy way to dispose of things," he said to her questioning glance. "It's addressed for a P.O. Box in Australia, which, I'm sorry to say, rules out Melbourne as one of our destinations. But if anyone's clever enough to find and follow it, they'll be thrown a good sixteen hours off track."

"It just seems too beautiful to gather moths in a post office," she said, somehow sad to see it go.

"If the loss of one dress is the only casualty of this departure," he said darkly, "I will feel quite fortunate. We haven't the luxury of carrying excess baggage, and the risk you being recognized if you wear it is too high." His tone softened. "I designed the dress for you, spent weeks perfecting the thing, but it -- it, I can live without."

"I understand," she said softly.

"Good," came his reply, gently. He put the hat on, pulling it as low as possible in the front, and turned towards the door, suitcase in hand... but then slowly turned back to her. She stood with her bag, ready to leave, to follow him... and utterly unable to read the look in his eyes.

"There is," he said, his formal tone unable to disguise the discomfort in his voice, "one additional matter to discuss."

He pulled his hand out of the pocket of his blazer, holding a small blue velvet ring box

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**Author's note: finished at last! That chapter just wanted to be a long one, and I couldn't find a good ending place until there. I wanted to get a lot of characterization established in this one, and then get back to the action in the next chapter.**

**A couple of people had asked in the comments, what Christine's motivation was for being in the plot to trap Erik (ie, the Don Juan performance) and what her motivation is to follow Erik now. I tend to use Leroux for characterization, and ALW as a base for plot, and in both I've noted -- Christine is utterly passive until the last moment, when she kisses Erik. She says she can't be part of the plot in Twisted Every Way, and yet she goes along with it, she reveals Erik onstage and yet follows him down to the lair and is kind enough to put on a wedding dress once she's there. (True, he's berating her, but she's complying.) **

**And so I'm using that as a base for her behavior here. Erik berated her a bit in Chapter 1 (he did say he'd kill Raoul if the boy caught up to them) and I think given her tendency to let other people make decisions for her, that should be motivation enough. I've attributed her passiveness to not knowing what she wants -- so the interesting part should come when she finally does. I still intend for this story to be an extended "Down Once More," and to lead up to a confrontation, but with the time that passes here during their flee, perhaps the outcome will be a bit different. Though I'm going to have to be careful to ensure that it doesn't look like Stockholm Syndrome. **

**Oh, also, to answer another question: this story assumes Erik did kill Buquet and Piangi. Perhaps in self defense, but, I'm not going to explain it away with a "Piangi was only sleeping." Erik is a dangerous, and somewhat unstable man, and Raoul is a dopey but nice, rich, vanilla guy. I think playing down Erik's bad qualities and making Raoul some kind of alcoholic jerk would make it far less meaningful when Christine chooses Erik. **

**Yikes, this author's note is as long as the story. Real quick: Feedback, please. This is my first time writing something longer than a 1 or 2 shot (I'm thinking 10 chapters, here) and I'm still looking for a beta, so your feedback is most welcomed. My main concern right now: point of view. We're only seeing Christine's eyes, because I wanted her to not quite know what's going on, and for the reader to be as baffled as she is, occasionally. Does it lose some emotional possibility because Erik's viewpoint isn't shown? Do readers need to know what Nadir and Raoul are thinking/doing, in pursuing them? **

**Anyway, feedback would be lovely -- even a "it's great" or "it sucks" would be worthwhile, to know that people are reading it. **

**Cheers! **

**Ver**


	4. Chapter 4

She glanced up at Erik, and then down again at the velvet ring box, and knew that he wouldn't be hesitant like this, knew he wouldn't look like he was gathering all his strength to speak if it was just the gift of some decorative bauble inside. Somehow consenting to follow him from flight to flight seemed easy compared to the decision to be his wife...

"I am not asking you to marry me, not here," his voice interrupted her thoughts, slightly aloof, guarded, and she tore her eyes away from the box in his hands to try and read the eyes beneath his furrowed brow. "I have asked you before, when it was all I could do to lift the words to my mouth to speak them, for fear that you would say no. And since you did not give me an answer, I will ask you again someday -- and it may be the death of me yet. But not yet. I am not asking now."

The emotion and determination in his litany shook her, but the words themselves were at odds with his hesitant posture and the object he held. She reached for the box, her long-cursed curiosity overwhelming, and he handed it to her without argument. Christine lifted the top to reveal an engagement ring with a diamond so large she thought it must surely be fake. "Then what is this for?" she said, confused.

He lifted the box from her hands, withdrew the ring, and turned it over in his hand, watching it as he spoke.

"I could tell you that it's because in some countries we may visit, a married woman would be safer. And that is not untrue..." but here, he shrugged. "To be honest, though, it's mostly that I had the passports made in pairs, each pair having the same last name. Call it a bit of hubris, or maybe just an embarrassing amount of optimism, but my Plan A had you willingly fleeing the country at my side, with my opera performed to triumph and rest of our lives ahead of us..." he spoke as though he were describing the silly dreams of a child, with a sort of affectionate sadness that struck her far more deeply than his rages ever had.

"I'm sorry..." she said, realizing quite how many of his dreams she had ruined, "About your Don Juan."

Some sentiment she couldn't identify flickered across his eyes, and he went on, "However, that plan hinged on you suddenly realizing some heretofore unknown affection for me and, well..." here he gestured, flippantly, dismissively. "I suppose I really should just be glad that at my age I'm still capable of such boundless, if unfounded, optimism."

She furrowed her brow. He went on.

"Plan B, as you'll recall, was tidy but morbid. And where we are now is, I suppose, some murky middle ground. You have not consented to marry me, nor have you said you would not, and so you shall wear the ring of a bride without being one." He gestured that she lift her left hand, and slid the ring onto her finger without touching her at all.

Such a small thing, and yet it filled her field of vision. His hands, putting a wedding ring on one of hers. Not the simple gold ring he'd said would keep her safe, not anything that she could possibly pretend wasn't a marriage band, disguise or not.

"Don't worry," he said, and she looked up. "This isn't some sitcom. I not going to use this to extract any public displays of affection from you, or to coerce you into hotel rooms with only one bed under the pretense of 'keeping up appearances.' Or anything else so ridiculous."

But Christine's mind was already racing ahead to how easy it would be to fall into this role; would it be any different than pretending to be a pageboy or a diva? Or consenting to a "play" engagement with Raoul?

"I understand," she said softly, and noted the rush of air he exhaled.

"Thank you," came his low reply, sounding more relieved than grateful. He pressed the button to open the suite doors. "Let's go. Everything will move very quickly, now."

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Out of the suite, up the aisle, and then she was following him up the jetway, into the airport, taking nearly two steps for each of the ones he took, walking at such a speed that she nearly needed to run to keep up. Scarf off, sunglasses on. Signs for customs pointed them left, down a long glassed-in hallway passing other departure gates, women and men in robes waiting for flights alongside others in suits, dresses.

Down another hallway, and into a room with queues and agents and Erik flashed some sort of paper and they were whisked to the front of the line. He said spoke with a British accent, his head ducked slightly down to the right, the hat leaning low over his face, and her heart thudded, for a moment, that the agent behind the glass would... she didn't know, and then the thud-thud of him stamping their passports and waving them on felt like relief.

Walking away quickly, Erik leaned over her, his arm coming up behind her but coming a centimeter short of touching at her waist, urging her on, and he said, lowly, fondly, "Oh -- did I mention that we're diplomats?"

And she wondered what he kept in the little red bag that real diplomats got. And how damn much he'd paid for those passports.

Another continent, and another culture and the airport was like a small familiar ledge from which to view the newness; inside the signs were in a different language, the metal detectors and walls and floors nicer and newer than the airport she'd known in Newark, but it was an airport nonetheless. Outside the windows, though, she saw huge expanses of desert beyond the runways, and far off skyscrapers of Dubai catching the light, their glint nearly blinding.

Erik slowed his pace as they stepped onto a moving walkway, and then, seeing her lagging, stopped altogether. She nodded appreciatively, and tried to catch her breath. Seeing that there was no one within earshot, she asked him, "How do you know where you're going? Did you read up on maps of every airport?"

"Actually, yes." he said, with the first bit of good natured humor that she'd heard from him in months. "But this one in particular I just happen to know."

"What -- did you design their opera house too?" Christine said, relaxing somewhat, even though the walkway was still hurtling them forward at a pace far faster than she was accustomed to. "Or just some of those skyscrapers?" She gestured at the distant glass metropolis.

"Only the good ones," he said with a nonchalance that almost made her laugh. "I designed quite a few highrise buildings here in one of the early oil booms. But after the first gulf war, the corporations couldn't afford me, and I found myself designing more for... private clients." His mood seemed to darken, and he shook his head, going on. "I'll see if I can point some of the better towers out to you from the air. We should be taking off to the East, so we'll go right over them."

The end of the walkway was approaching, and Christine took a deep breath, as though she was preparing for a sprint. "Where will we be... taking off... to?"

"If we can get to the gate in the next twelve minutes?" He looked back over his shoulder at her. "Lagos, as Canadians. Hong Kong on Swiss passports in half an hour, if we can't."

He stopped sharply at a mailbox, and took the package containing the Don Juan costume out from under his arm. He slid it into the mailbox, swiftly shut the lid, and then they both walked away from that bit of the past.

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Nearly running again, suitcase rolling behind her, people and gates going by in a blur once they rounded the corner into the main terminal and swiftly moved down the center walkway. The glass ceiling soared above her, an atrium atop a shopping mall so grand that the airplanes seemed almost an afterthought. She was wondering if the palm trees indoors were real or not, when Erik gestured out the window at a particularly large plane. "That's ours; we'll wait until they're finished boarding coach and then get on right before they close the jetway."

The splashy logo on the side of the airplane and cheerfully suited flight attendants she could see up ahead at the gate seemed so much in contrast to Erik's normal taste. "We're flying Virgin?" she asked, perplexed by his sudden tolerance for cheeky wit.

"I'm not without a sense of humor," he said dryly. "I thought the name was rather appropriate, actually."

"Look," Christine interjected, her voice choppy as she strode to catch up with him, "Would you stop it? I'm tired of the self deprecating jabs. 'Unfounded optimism'? Do you sit at home and think these things up, then whip them out to make me feel bad? You want me to love you and all you do is talk about hating yourself!" She stopped walking, but stopped just short of her desire to stamp her foot like a child. After a moment of floundering, she slammed the handle down on the rolling suitcase, crossed her arms and waited for him to respond.

She expected an argument, or perhaps to be told to hush, to not attract attention -- and so it came as a bit of a surprise when he swiftly pulled her into his arms. In a second he had stepped sideways into a corridor off the main terminal, and twisted around, pulling her up against the wall, his whole body encircling her from behind. She gasped, startled, and his arms lifted quickly, as though he'd been singed. But she made no movement to step away, and finally his hands came to rest on her shoulders, tentative, but firmly holding her in place.

"Change of plans," his breath brushed her ear as he spoke, his voice low. "Bad weather in Lagos. We'll be going to Hong Kong after all."

"What's wrong?" she asked, trying to turn her head and look at him, but his fingertips on her shoulders were like steel. "Is someone at the gate? Did --"

"_Christine_," his voice urged her to silence more strongly than a hand over her mouth. "We have to get to gate 34, and without attracting any attention. I need you to walk forward, back out into the main hall; get your suitcase, and walk, briskly but unhurried, back the way we came. I'll catch up to you when you pass that glorified shopping mall. Whatever you do, don't look back. Can you do that?"

The words filled her ears but barely registered, the tone and beauty of his voice threatening to overcome her just as it had in her early days of following her teacher's every order. The people bustling through the airport seemed to swim in the distance; she closed her eyes, and said, "Yes."

The pressure of his fingertips vanished from her shoulders, and she hesitated, waiting for further instruction. But the air was empty, his voice did not come again, and after a moment she wondered if he was still behind her. _Don't look back_, he had said, and suddenly his cries from nearly 6 months before echoed in her ears -- _Don't look at me! -- _and she shuddered, remembering the feeling she'd had, apple and Eve, standing there with his mask in her hand.

It was so much easier to be in his thrall when she couldn't see him. Give in and slip under, the relief of letting him lead, submerging herself in the beauty of his voice and forgetting about any details to the contrary.

And yet she wanted to look back; to see if he was there; to ask what the hell was going on; to clear the trance from her head and talk to him honestly.

It was so much easier to be in his thrall, period. And Christine trained her eyes on the colorful bustle at the middle of the terminal, stepped out to grab her suitcase, and strode off in the direction he'd sent her. She kept her head high and her eyes distant, but all the while her mind was desperate to know what scene was unfolding at the flight they hadn't boarded. Or maybe no one was there at all, and this was a test. She reached the first of the shops and tried to glance in a mirror as she passed -- not breaking his order to not look back, but hoping for a glimpse of what was going on.

The scene reflected in the silvered shop window was too distant and crowded to see anything back at the gate, but she nearly stopped short when she caught sight of herself, her clothes and haircolor foreign and half her face obscured by the giant sunglasses. She didn't know whether to gawk at how nice the clothes were, or at how mutable her appearance was. The sandy brown hair of the wig curled under at her chin, tickling, irritating, and she tucked it behind her ear -- noticing the sparkling ring on her hand in the reflection, but before she could reflect on that herself, she saw Erik approaching and remembered that she'd been told to keep walking.

"Almost perfect," he said as he caught up to her. "But next time, don't stop to lache les fenetres."

"I don't even know what that means," Christine said, suddenly feeling cranky and reluctant again at being scolded.

"Sorry." he replied immediately, gesturing with a nod of his head that she should walk with him. Their pace was deliberately slower, just an average couple walking to their departure gate, and he went on "The phrase is French for 'window shopping', but it literally means 'lick the windows' -- which has interesting implications about the Gallic relationship with fashion and conspicuous consumption, not to mention desiring the unattainable. But I digress, and you've got sufficient funds in the pocket of that purse to buy every pricey bit of jewelry in that store. So perhaps the phrase was malapropos; I apologize."

"There wasn't..." and then Christine unzipped the handbag and saw a small wallet she hadn't seen before. "You put money in my purse?"

"While we were still on the plane; yes. Don't look indignant, it's spending money, not a bribe. It would look odd if you had to ask me for money every time you wanted to buy a cup of coffee, and if something should happen to me, you'll need the means to keep running." His tone was as casual as his walking speed, so confidant that she nearly glossed over his words entirely.

"Need to keep running?" she asked, stopping short again.

"The gate's just up ahead," he said, gesturing. "The jetway docks in the middle on the larger Airbuses, meaning first class turns left and coach turns right, so we can board early without having to worry about the entire plane staring us down as they traipse back to their seats."

"Don't be a snob," Christine replied, "it's one thing to like nice things, and another to look down on people who don't have them -- and you're changing the subject. What did you mean, when you said --"

But his anger was quick, and controlled, as he hissed, "I've been looked down on -- and worse -- for 40 odd years, Christine. You'll pardon me if I have little empathy for the masses. If I surround myself with 'nice things,' it's been because they're the only comfort I've ever had."

"I know your life hasn't been easy," Christine said slowly, her words approaching him hesitantly. "But it's just that... "

But she had nothing, really -- no good response, and the issue seemed to have drifted far from coach vs first classism. And her earlier anger had kind of fizzled.

"Nevermind, I'm sorry," she said, energyless, apathetic and somewhat sullen. "If it was so important that we get to the gate, shouldn't we get going? Or should I go see if Raoul's followed us and is waiting back at the other gate?"

"He's not." Erik said, disdainful and definitive. "And we'll be boarding shortly."

He showed of some kind of silver card to the gate agent and they were jumped to the front of the boarding queue, passes scanned and proceeding to the airplane. Christine smiled and nodded obligatorily at the line of flight attendants, crossed behind the galley, and turned left to go to their seats. She hesitated a moment at the seat, reading the number off her ticket again. She looked over at Erik, who was maneuvering his suitcase into the overhead compartment as if nothing were wrong.

"Are these the right seats...?" She asked finally.

"Yes," he replied, hushed as he looked over his shoulder at passengers walking up the other aisle. "Unfortunately few airlines provide the kind of seclusion in first class that our last flight did.You'll get wraparound curtains here and there, but for the most part it's just these sort of pod chairs with a bit of a plastic wall extending out from the headrest in the name of privacy."

"Well... I'm sure it'll be fine..." Christine said lamely, not really certain why, or what would be 'fine'.

"It has to be, if any of this is to work." He pressed his hand to the beige latex on his right cheek, a faint anxiety entering his demeanor. "Although, if you wouldn't mind, my taking the window seat would allow for a little less... exposure."

"Oh -- of course," she replied awkwardly, getting her purse out of the seat where she'd tossed it. He nodded appreciatively, and swiftly sat down, taking only a moment to settle into the chair before turning to his right in a fixed stare; seemingly looking out the window, but also silhouetting his face such that only the good side could be seen to someone walking up the aisle. She wondered how often he'd practiced that, or if he'd just learned it instinctively.

A man in a green blazer leaned over Christine's shoulder, holding a tray filled with champagne flutes, and said something to her in ...Chinese? She smiled nervously, not sure how to respond. Their passports for the Hong Kong tickets were Swiss, Erik had said. In Switzerland they spoke... German? French?

The flight attendant nodded understandingly at her silence. "Do you speak ... English?" he asked, finally. "Would you like champagne before takeoff?"

"A little," Christine lied, and then hastened to add, awkwardly, "A little ... English. No champagne. Thank you."

"Sir?" the flight attendant gestured towards Erik.

"No, thank you," he replied, not rudely, but not encouraging conversation.

"I'll return with more choices once we're in flight," the flight attendant replied helpfully. "Do you wish that I take your hat and coat, and hang them for you?"

There was a pause, and Erik's shoulders seemed to stiffen in his . "I'll keep the jacket. But I suppose you're right; a gentleman doesn't wear a hat indoors," he said cooly, and turned towards him, removed the brown, plaid, short-brim fedora he'd been wearing, handing it over like a gun in a standoff. The attendant took it, but didn't move away, staring curiously at the blank beige mask. Erik's shoulders were set, his stare steady, and finally the uniformed man blinked and said, "Thank you, sir," and hurried away to hang up the hat.

Erik turned wordlessly and leaned back in his chair, looking away from the aisle in full now, and the airplane began to slowly move in reverse, overcoming the incredible inertia of a half-million pound object at rest. Christine was aware of the flight attendants going through the motions of showing exits and oxygen masks, and of the engines whirring up, rumbling to life, but her eyes were on Erik, trying to read his posture, to see if he was angry or bristling at the intrusion or upset, or...

It was the noise she noticed first, a deep, low, squeak, if there could be such a thing, and she looked over to see the source of the sound -- and saw Erik's fingers gripping the side of the chair with such tension that she expected the leather-covered armrest to burst in his hand. And she was quite certain that it wasn't fear of flying jitters, and it wasn't anger, and he must have dealt with people staring at him like that every damn time he'd ever ventured out of his house and --

She loosened her seat belt, and leaned over, and laid her right hand on his left arm, reassuringly, and it came so naturally that she jumped, surprised, as Erik whipped his head around to look at her tiny hand resting on his sleeve. But she didn't let go, and said, "Erik..." imploringly, as she moved to stroke his arm, trying to calm him -- only to pull away, as she felt a wetness beneath her hand, and turned her palm up, stained red, and she realized his sleeve was drenched with blood.

"Please don't pass out," he said dryly.

But she was already hyperventilating and staring, horrified at the splash of red on her hand.

.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Author's Note: Oh, it takes me a couple of months, but the updates are still coming. This is my first time writing any kind of action -- if you've read any of my other stories, you know I tend to just stick the characters in a room and let them be emotional at one another. I guess having an extended chase scene is exactly the opposite of that. :-)**

**Anyway, as always, feedback good or bad is much appreciated, and is the fuel that helps me update sooner. **


	5. Chapter 5

The heavy howl of the engines grew louder, approaching a high pitched whine just before the plane shot down the runway, moving from a standstill to takeoff like a slingshot. Christine fell back in her seat, plunked down by gravity as the plane escaped it, but her focus was narrowed to the blood that stained her palm.

"What is... are you ok? Are you going to be ok?" She couldn't slow her frantic respiration, couldn't understand the heart-gripping fear or the sudden presence of blood that had prompted it.

Erik's eyes widened somewhat at her wild panic, but his gaze didn't once lower to his own arm and apparent injury, it just remained steady on her, studying for a second and then soothing, as he voiced a soft hushing sound, deeper than a simple "Shhh", and it silenced her entirely. "Breathe with me," he said, his voice still low, "As we did in your early lessons."

Her posture was wrong for singing, to say nothing of their location, but she suspected that singing wasn't his intent. She drew a steady breath when he did, and attempted to hold it until he released his own, but let it out in a puff too soon. He said nothing and so she tried again as he inhaled with impossible slowness, and she looked not at his eyes anymore but straight at his chest, watching for it to fall, and after several minutes felt herself relax into the pattern he set, her agitated pulse returning to normal. Her thoughts still raced -- he was hurt, and they were trapped on this airplane for the next seven or eight hours -- was there a doctor aboard? Would Erik allow someone to treat him? What if it wasn't his blood at all -- had he fought someone while he'd sent her away from the first plane in Dubai?

"I meant it in jest when I asked you not to pass out," he said gently. "But I'll have to watch my sarcasm. Keep your voice very low. Here," and with his right hand he reached inside his blazer and withdrew a square of navy blue silk. "There should be a bottle of water in the amenities bag that was on your seat when we boarded, the one with the slippers and magazines. Wet the handkerchief and clean up."

Christine did as best she could to wipe away the red, and tried to stay calm, eyeing around her surreptitiously to see if any passengers had taken note of the girl quietly washing blood off her hands, but the occupants of the cabin seemed to be oblivious. She finally looked back to Erik and whispered so forcefully that it was barely a question at all, "Why is there blood on your sleeve!"

"Your dear childhood friend shot me. If you recall." There was none of the normal sneer as he referenced Raoul, just a strange emotionless statement of a fact, as though it were normal to have been shot at. He looked down at his arm, judging the injury as dispassionately as an insurance inspector, but his tone sharpened as he went on, "I would criticize his marksmanship for a supposed member of the nobility, but it's not the first time he's fired a gun at me and I must admit, his aim is improving. Though I could murder him for sending a bullet so close to you."

"You'll have to add that reason to the list," Christine said dazedly, and his low chuckle barely registered in her ears. "I'm sorry -- and wait, he's shot at you before? And you said it was just a scratch -- you told me you were fine!"

"I also told you I was an angel," he said with a smile that bent into a grimace. "I'm sorry; I would have said pretty much anything to get you moving, I needed you to come with me."

"Why didn't you just chloroform me right there on that stuntman cushion when we fell? You could have saved yourself an argument and the trouble of making up a few lies," she said, her anger quiet but resurgent.

"Because chloroform is a carcinogen, and more importantly, it doesn't work like in the movies --" he started, and on the raging look she shot him he hastened to add, "but that's not why. I wanted you to choose to come with me. To be with me. It's... it's all I've ever wanted, and I know I've started out wrong every time; I've lied and mislead you and I'm prepared for a lifetime of asking forgiveness. Just to have that chance to do so -- to bring you an apology and a cup of coffee each morning -- Christ, I would take it."

Her anger broke and receded at the fervent humility in his tone. Their eyes locked for a moment; her posture relaxed, and he went on.

"I don't want you to be upset with me, and I know there are many things we'll need to discuss... But right now I'm apparently bleeding a bit more than I'd hoped, and I'd like to take care of it before it becomes a class two hemorrhage. Fair?"

Her stomach lurched at the word "hemorrhage" and she lowered her face into her hands and nodded. "Yes. Of course."

The seat belt light chimed off as the plane's climb leveled, and Erik pressed the buckle and slowly stood, walked around her chair and opened the overhead compartment to rummage in his bag for a minute. She saw him slip several things in the pocket of his blazer, and then he casually stepped forward to walk up the aisle to the restroom. But he stopped sharp, and staring at his back, Christine thought she saw the slightest shake of his shoulders, before he slowly turned back to her. He leaned over, and when his voice came it was hesitant and emotion drenched.

"Thank you... for trying to... Thank you, for your hand on my arm." and without staying for her response, he turned swiftly and proceeded up the aisle.

She bowed her head, wondering if anyone had ever comforted him before, and feeling wretched for every time she'd seen him unhappy and been too indecisive, too afraid of how her actions might be interpreted, too uncertain herself of what her feelings were, to do a damn thing. Christine watched him make his way towards the front of the plane, his normally light and graceful gait uneven, and it suddenly occurred to her that he must be in an enormous amount of pain. And Raoul had caused -- no. She had caused this wound.

She heard the clink of her seatbelt unbuckling and was on her feet before she'd realized what she'd done, suddenly uncaring of attracting attention, and Christine flew up the aisle behind him, reaching the door of the restroom just as he was pulling it shut behind him and without thought or plan she grabbed the door, wrapping her fingers around the edge and winced in anticipation. But the door did not slam on her hand -- it stopped short, and then slowly swung outward and she was faintly aware of Erik saying her name in a baffled voice, but she didn't bother with explanation because she had none, and so she wedged her right shoulder in and he let go of the door altogether. She pushed, and stepped into the bathroom, sliding between Erik and the sink he was facing, and he let out a soft hiss that turned into a gasp, leaning forward as though he couldn't breathe from the shock, as her hipbones slid past his own, her jeans pressed to the front of his unpleated trousers in the tiny restroom space.

Instantly, he leapt back, but even in a first class lavatory, there was only half a foot of space to retreat from her in. Christine reached over and locked the door, then half sat on the edge of the counter and returned her attention to him, gesturing that he should come closer. "I'm going to help," she said with a determination that surprised her, "You're left handed, you can't stitch up the wound yourself. You need me to help and you won't ever ask."

The laugh that escaped from under the mask seemed almost more at himself than at her, as he stood still breathing heavily, her proximity seemingly thrilling and terrifying him as he tremblingly leaned towards her and then away. "If I had known," he said at last, "that I would have such a nurse, I would have shot myself six months ago."

"Don't say that!" Aghast and impassioned she reached for the pocket of his coat. "Do you have matches so I can sterilize the needle? There's probably a smoke detector in here, though..." he initially flinched at her reach and then lifted his hands like a fugitive caught in a spotlight, letting her look inside the pocket of his blazer. She withdrew not the peroxide, needle and thread she expected, but rather a rolled, rubbery bandage.

"This is less an issue of stitches, and more the need of a tourniquet, I'm afraid," he said, lowering his arms to his side. "The bullet missed the brachial artery, but blood loss is the main concern. A tight wrap and a fresh dressing should stabilize me until we can get a little further out and have sufficient lead to stop for a while."

"You don't even know how bad it is," Christine said, and reached for his blazer again, this time pushing it off his shoulders, and again he flinched, but she ignored it and pulled his right arm out of the sleeve. Her movements were the most confidant she'd been in months, and she felt almost professional, clinical, as though she were genuinely nursing him, as though she genuinely knew what he hell she was doing, as she gently lowered the jacket, as wide as she could, from around his left arm.

All thoughts of professionalism fled as the explosion of red on his dress shirt came into view and she felt herself pale, her head light. The sleeve was drenched with blood but undamaged; he had clearly bandaged his own arm and changed shirts since being onstage for Don Juan, probably during her long drugged sleep. "We need to get this shirt off you," she said, with a deep breath, and she reached for the buttons without looking up at him, trying to regain the feeling of confidence she'd had earlier. He stood still, motionless to the point of seeming frozen as she rested her forearms on the cool surface of his chest and worked the button at his collar open, and the one below and it was only as she reached the third one that she noticed the incredible silence -- was he holding his breath? She finally looked up at Erik and he exhaled from somewhere deep within him, his eyelids, shoulders and posture altogether falling as the air left his body, and he unsteadily swayed for a minute, before finally leaning forward and bracing himself with his right arm against the wall behind her. His chin dropped down, and she could feel his breath, warm against the top of her head, her scalp tingling.

"You are going to give me a heart attack," he murmured raggedly, in a tone that suggested he wouldn't entirely mind, but it brought her hands to a halt as she realized exactly what she was doing -- standing closer to him than she ever had, nearly tearing the clothes from his body.

She blushed, deeply, and ducked her head, muttering a soft, "I'm sorry," as she realized her hands were still gripping his half-open shirt. The flush to her cheeks deepened into shame as she realized how she must be affecting him -- how badly his must want to feel her hands on him -- dear god, undressing him. But probably not like this.

"There's a..." and he blinked, and rolled his hand a few times, gesturing, before the word seemed to come to him, "...bit of gauze, and tape, in the coat pocket. I can wear the same shirt, until we land, but we should probably rinse the blood from the jacket." His voice was gaspy and uneven, the words broken like a man out of breath.

"Ok..." she said, glad to have orders to follow, and bent to get his blazer from the floor, as he hesitantly continued unbuttoning his shirt, one handed. She tried to think of something comforting or useful or something to say, but the air was warm and artificially scented and the light fluorescent and dear god she was tired and --

A sharp rap sounded at the door.

"Excuse me... sir and madam. There is to be only one person in the lavatory at a time."

Christine looked to Erik, uncertain whether to be embarrassed or afraid to leave him alone. Erik, however, nodded at the door. "I would not have minded your help... but I can do this," he said.

"I don't want you to bleed to death!" she whispered, with a ferocity that seemed to send her heart out into the air, just behind the words, before snapping it back again.

"And if I were somewhat less distracted by this pain, I would rejoice those words, my dear, thank you." He leaned over her again, his head bent perpendicular such that he talked to the top of her ear and she stared at his shirtfront. The sickening red had begun to spread from his sleeve to his chest, and she closed her eyes. "But even if I am to bleed to death, I'd rather do it in a five star hotel than in some questioning area at the airport for disobeying a flight attendant. And since I suspect you'd rather I not dispose of him at 36,000 feet, you'd probably better get back to our seats."

"Ok," she said reluctantly, and moved towards the door. Erik stepped back and nodded at her, and she couldn't tell whether he was granting her permission to leave or telling her he'd be ok, but she opened the door and slipped out, coming face to face with the flight attendant from before, along with an older woman who appeared to be waiting for the restroom with a scornful look on her face. Christine ducked her head -- knowing what they must be thinking -- and knowing it was better than them knowing the truth. "Sorry," she said with a smile of fake embarrassment but she was stunned by the next words that came from her mouth. "We're newlyweds."

A loud thump sounded from within the restroom, and Christine looked over her shoulder, concerned, but no further noise came.

She continued to smile apologetically, and then turned to leave. The woman crossed her arms, her disapproval unrelenting, but the flight attendant looked as though he were merely amused, and walked down the aisle with her, his English still formal, but tone far more friendly. "I'm sorry madam, but it is a rule. And my congratulations on your marriage. Are you sure you would not like champagne?"

"Actually," Christine said, rubbing her forehead, the gigantic wedding ring catching her eyes as much as his, "that'd be nice. Thank you."

She fell into her seat and sat uncomfortably. She fumbled with the buttons on the chair and put the footrest up, then immediately dropped it -- Erik would have trouble walking around it to his seat. After a minute of staring anxiously up the aisle at the restroom door, she remembered -- seat belt -- and fastened it. The proffered champagne came, and Christine drank it, gratefully. The attendant replaced her empty glass with a full one, and with quick sips she nearly drained it, her anxiety failing to fade, and Erik still did not return from the lavatory. She was wondering if another would help, when Erik finally emerged from the restroom, swiftly strode towards her, and took his seat.

"Make sure you drink enough water; the dehydration seems to compound with each additional flight," Erik said, gesturing towards her glass.

"Sure..." she said, "Are you..?"

"I'll be stable for 10-12 more hours, I think."

"Ok," she said, settling into her chair, relief and champagne buzzing at last, the tense hunch of her shoulders unwinding. "I was... worried."

"I know..." he said slowly, "even if I don't know how to believe it." The bewilderment and and near reverence in his voice rang through the air, clear and pure, and Christine wanted to just hear him happy like this, and not think about tomorrow. The moment fizzled and vanished he went on, his tone quickly covered by his typical light, biting humor. "But it appears the only fatality today will be my blazer -- I soaked the sleeve and rinsed it as best I could, but that's a hell of a thing to do to a Kiton suit."

Christine raised an eyebrow, "Complaining about your dry cleaning makes you seem far less dangerous. You'd better not let word get out."

He smiled, the latex mask crinkling at the edge of his mouth, but such lovesick affection and hope in his eyes that she thought she'd stutter if she tried to speak. A long moment, and then his answer came. "I'll trust you to keep my secrets Christine. Quite honestly, I'm glad to have such a prosaic problem. And Kiton is litter compared to Saville Row -- at some point this trip will bring us to London, and we can stop for a bit. I shall have a new suit made, and you -- you can have anything you want. I'll get a hotel suite and we'll hold court in the living room, I'll have the best boutiques send over every purse of the season. Pick a designer -- I'll get them to come and tailor a dress for you."

"Erik," she demurred, "I don't need anything. You spent too much money on the clothes you already gave me -- I know those brands are expensive. I liked the songs you gave me, back in New York, that's a good sort of present."

He shook his head. "Each time I hear you say my name, I want to give you the entire bloody planet."

Christine knew without looking that his gaze was full of love for her; he was heartened by her display of nursely affection, and why shouldn't he be? Why shouldn't she let him be? She looked down, unable to respond, uncertain of what she would do if she met his eyes again. The buoyance of his mood seemed to dissipate and settle over them both like fog, worsening with each second that she stared, uncertain, unknowing, but not unfeeling, at the ground.

"...Not that it would do any good," he finally said, and turned away from her.

**---------------------------------------**

**Author's note: Updated at last! Oddly enough, this story is being mostly written in airports and on airplanes -- they do say write what you know. That being the case, the lags between updates are just when I haven't had a trip in a while. Looks like my travel schedules pretty booked for the next few months, so I should have plenty of time and inspiration to write.**

**A couple of people had asked how Erik was wounded, and hopefully it's clear after this chapter -- but if it's not, go back and read the beginning chapter 1 again. If it's not clear after that, then it's my fault as a writer, let me know:-)**

**Many thanks, as always, to my readers and especially to my wonderful reviewers. I take each bit of feedback seriously, especially the constructive critiques. Please do review, even if it's just to say hi -- knowing that there are readers eager for an update is what motivates me to write instead of just sleeping or reading a magazine on the plane!**

**Cheers, **

**Ver**


	6. Chapter 6

Dubai to Singapore; 3600 miles, 8 hours.  
Singapore to Manila; 1480 miles, 3 hours  
Manila to Tokyo; 1800 miles, 5 hours.

It began to feel like a dance.

Deplaning, rushing through customs with yet another set of counterfeit credentials that were quickly disposed of; a red wig, a black one, sunglasses and scarves for her and an assortment of hats for him. Pulling on a jacket - throwing away a long clip-on ponytail in an airport bathroom - Christine was reminded of the children's books with pictures of characters divided into thirds, each part lining up, a football helmet atop a ballerina's body with a mermaid's tail. Swap out another part of herself and take hold of a document that proclaimed her identity for the next hour or so.

There was mostly silence, between them. Erik gave her directions; the gameplan still entirely in his control and moreover, his head; she rarely had instructions for more than the next ten minutes ahead of her. Each instruction was carefully formulated; not curt, but mostly without warmth. That Erik was in a good deal of pain was certain; she didn't torture her own sense of guilt with whether it was due to his wounded arm or wounded heart. He was businesslike - if there were such a business as prolonged law-evasion via international jetting - and she was quiet and mostly acquiescent. She was not unhurried, not unstressed, not unworried... but not unhappy either. It was out of her hands, and her job, it seemed, was just to keep up and she felt capable of it; it was easy enough to do, if not to understand.

Deplaning in Tokyo, she trod down the jetway, feet starting to ache from the perpetual swell and shrink of being onboard the plane, purse slung over her shoulder, suitcase trailing in her left hand, and she didn't bother to look at him for instruction; another passport, another scarf over her hair to dispose of later. The sunglasses, she kept each time.

But the plan was still his.

"We'll be transferring terminals this morning," he said lowly, casually, steering her with his words. As always, he removed the sim card from his phone, subtly folded it until it snapped, then dumped the pieces into separate garbage cans and replaced it with a new one. Then he turned left, not going toward customs.

And so Christine followed, as always. They walked in a scattered group of perhaps five percent of the previous plane's occupants, each of them forking off in different directions to begin long walks to connecting flights. Erik slowed his pace somewhat, almost hanging back, and Christine fell in line behind him, each step seeming to lag interminably after so many hours of racing through airports. The last of the previous passengers turned a corner ahead of them and Erik resumed the normal breakneck pace again, walking brisk steps down the long hallway.

"It's very empty", she said, looking around and feeling alone for the first time in hours, or days.

"It's very early," he said, glancing back, "and no one will be on the domestic flights to Osaka or Hokkaido for another three hours. The frequent flyer lounges won't be open for another two. It is somewhat out of place that we're here, so we need to hurry."

Another hallway opened up ahead of her, an opalescent tunnel with futuristic white plastic walls so perfectly shiny that the scuffed floors seemed like an insult. They reached the first of the moving walkways that dashed the corridor and she stepped on and rested for a moment, rolling her neck and watching the orbs of the lights above reflected jaggedly in the floor, a line of glowing dots stretching off into the distance, then she jogged to catch up, the suitcase pulling jerkily behind her.

More walking, another horizontal escalator, but up ahead she could just barely see a blue glow, so faint, but lovely. As they got closer it seemed to seep out, infiltrate the light all around her, and color it entirely, and then as the walkway passed by she realized - it was daylight, a tiny bit of foggy blue morning glow amidst the awful hours of fluorescent. She could almost feel the coolness and the damp of the world outside and she realized that she had felt dried out and tired for days.

Christine scanned the gaping expanse of tunnel ahead, looking for more of the pale blue glows, but before she could see much further Erik turned sharply at the end of the moving walkway and walked left, away from the rest of the airport, towards the window where a single door was blocked off with construction tape.

"This way, if you will," he said, unsticking the tape and gracefully gesturing for her to proceed through the door. She looked at him, waiting for instructions, half reaching for the handle.

"Yes, it should be open, turn it quickly, please." He replied.

She pushed it open and stepped through slowly, pushing the suitcase ahead of her, looking back over her shoulder at him for some kind of indication as to what she should be doing, here, but he was already coming through the door, and pulling it shut behind him so swiftly she imagined for a moment it was magnetically attracted to his hand.

She stood, watching him watch the door close silently and step forward just as his head turned to face her - and, as she hadn't moved, he collided into her, his shoulder and chest jolting against her back. She stumbled forward a half step and swiftly he shot his right arm out to grab her waist, preventing her from falling further - his palm landed on her hip but immediately jumped away as if burnt.

"Pardon," he said quickly.

Even though a layer of coat and pants, she had felt the pressure of each of his fingers splayed across her hipbone, and it felt simultaneously reassuring and - and -

"Where do I go?" she asked.

He was looking down and flexing his hand as though he was shaking some pain away, then blinked a few times, and replied, "Left, please, through the door, down the stairs, and straight into the hallway at the bottom then right," as calm and as warmly as if he were an usher showing the way to a box back at the Opera.

She nodded, and headed the few steps to the next door, but the knob wouldn't turn, and there was no card reader to swipe or keypad on which he could enter a code. She heard Erik swear, sharply, and she was about to ask him what to do, but he was already brushing by on her left, reaching for the lock with a credit card in his hand.

"I'll have to do this one the old fashioned way," he said, as though it were tacky and tiresome, and abruptly threw his right shoulder against the door while sliding the card between the doorframe and the lock. He winced.

Christine felt her brow furrow, and the omnipresent anxiety gain a foothold and creep in. "Erik... are we..." She looked over her shoulder at the door behind them, her pulse suddenly uneasy.

He raised his finger to his lips. "Just a moment, please, I have to listen to hear if the edge catches." Then he returned to the door, trying the credit card at various angles in silence, until he apparently heard what he was looking for, and sharply jammed the card in with his right hand, pulling the door knob with his left, and the door swung open. He started down the stairs without a word, but at the first landing, looked back at Christine, where she still stood at the top.

"Do you need help with your bag?" he asked.

"I don't think we're supposed to be here," she finally offered up.

He nodded slowly, seeming to gauge her, and said hesitantly, almost a question more than a statement, "Let me assure you - we're not. But we won't be here long."

"It's just... if we run into someone, will you have to... will you have to kill them? I just... I can't." She was shaking her head, as though she might be able to shake out the right sentence, but the words weren't coming.

"You're worried now?" Erik asked, seeming almost amused. He walked back up the steps to her, stopping one below, and she realized it was the closest they'd ever been to the same height, her eyes level with his mismatched ones. "Did it feel safer before, where we were out in public? I don't know whether to be insulted at your lack of confidence in my abilities or touched that you think I'd be too nobly bound by social mores to eliminate someone in a crowd."

"Stop," she said, and looked up at him angrily. "Just lay off, for a while. I'm exhausted. I'm here, I've cooperated better than you could have hoped for, but this feels... you know what I mean. It feels risky."

"You underestimate my capacity for hope," he said pointedly, "but I respect your unease. I can tell you that there won't be any guards, because we're headed for a portion of the terminal that's under construction and the crews aren't working on a Saturday. And I can tell you that when I choose to, I am certainly adept at incapacitating an assailant using non-fatal means. Does that help?"

"Do I have a choice?" Christine asked, staring at the ceiling, trying to understand the anxiety she was feeling. Was it about the path of havoc that could be wrought in her name, or was it that she didn't want them to be caught, period?

He leaned forward, seeking out her eye contact again, drawing her attention back to him. "Please - please listen. _Christine_. You can choose to put your faith in me. If you trust my ability to pull this off, and if you believe that I have already analyzed upwards of 20 options for getting us out of this airport and chosen the least risky one, then this starts to seem like the only sane thing to do. I am not a risk adverse man in most areas of my life, Christine, but when it comes to your safety, please know, I'm not taking any chances. I want you - "

He seemed to fluster, and started over, "What I want is you, in one piece - not a chance to show off my martial arts skills. And my arm is hardly fit for a fight right now."

She looked at him tiredly. "A choice with only one option doesn't count as a choice.."

His shoulders slumped, a little. "There is always the other alternative.. But it's not as simple as you walking up to the nearest policeman and proclaiming you've escaped the madman. This is not really the time and place I had hoped to go into it, but -"

"I'm not going another step until you explain." Christine heard herself saying, before her mind had consciously decided.

"I wouldn't have imagined otherwise. One moment." He walked back up the last few stairs and pulled the door shut behind her. "It's probably best if you sit down."

Warily, she sat at the top of the landing, leaning back against her suitcase and the wall, and he awkwardly crouched beside her.

"Your other choice has always been to, frankly, choose. To tell me with certainty that you love that boy and you could never, ever, love me."

"You said you'd kill yourself," she threw at him.

"I still might. When I anticipate a world without you, it seems like the better alternative. But I don't want that to be a factor, here, because there's enough additional complication already." His voice was gentle, and wary.

"How can you possibly expect - "

"I need you to listen to me, _please_. Up until very recently, the worst thing in the world I could contemplate was that you would choose him, and I would have to let you go, and I would lose the only person who had ever made me happy - although 'happy' seems like a bit of an understatement. You make me feel something shocking and soul wrenching, some kind of burst that I have burned through half the pharmaceuticals in Manhattan trying to reproduce without avail. You are the only person who has ever made me feel that... or ever made me feel something so simple as hopeful. Or tender. Or any number of other emotions that I have suddenly grown quite attached to."

Even with him crouched beside her, he was still taller than she was. She tried to read his eyes, but he went on.

"...But I have, of course, been keeping tabs on the internal communications among the managers of the Met, the authorities from the FBI and CIA with whom they've been conspiring, and, unfortunately, the DeChangy family."

He took a deep breath. "Christine, your country's government doesn't have the best reputation for clemency toward those who would aid or abet terrorists, and unfortunately by some of their classifications, that's what I am."

"What?" she said. "For what country? What cause? What have you blown up?"

"I would confess at the very least to criminal destruction of a chandelier that lead to reckless endangerment of the populace, a good deal of manslaughter and fatal self defense that veered too close to second degree murder, and a truly magnificent amount of embezzlement. None of it traditional enemy-of-the-state material, but your Homeland Security department is overzealous, to put it mildly. And certainly the best way to get extra agents and funding for a manhunt is to brand it a threat to national security."

She rubbed her forehead, and gestured at the landing beside her, and he moved from kneeling to sitting and continued. "About a week ago I discovered that your innocence and non-involvement with regards to my actions was not necessarily considered a given. The one bit of fortune in this is that the authority assigned to the case was Agent Kahn -"

"I remember him. He said he knew you." She interjected, hesitantly.

"A very long time ago, we were... friends, I suppose you would say. I saved his life, once. He's a principled man, even if his current employers are much less so. His meddling has been unwelcome, but from what I've observed of his proposals regarding this case, he's advocating sanity as best he can. But your DeChangy, to his irksome credit, has been fairly tireless in striking bargains with the government, with Agent Khan's help. The original deal was that your involvement in the plot to catch me was a plea bargain to guarantee your non-guilt."

"What?" Christine jolted up. "Why didn't he tell me any of this?"

"...And in the event that you didn't carry it off successfully, the backup plan would be to have you declared a victim of manipulation as you were mentally unfit to be aware of your actions."

A moment passed, and she looked up at him with furrowed eyebrows. "...Raoul's going to have me declared insane."

He nodded, his expression somber. "I find it reprehensible, but given the circumstances, he doesn't have many options. The DeChangy family psychiatrist is prepared to make the diagnosis. You would spend some time in an institution, probably undergo some unnecessary treatments at some clinic in the Swiss Alps, and eventually make a quiet recovery and return to life. It would probably be the end of your singing career. But you wouldn't go to prison."

She pulled her legs in tightly, and rested her forehead on her knees, suddenly cold, the world spinning. Finally she turned her head laid her cheek on her knees. "So because I didn't go through with the plan, I didn't take off your mask... that's what you meant, when you said I'd need the money to keep running."

"I imagined that might be preferable to losing months or years of your life to a mental hospital." he said grimly. "There are some lovely tropical islands without extradition treaties to the US for minor offenders. You'd stand a decent chance blending in, if you were on your own."

She squeezed her eyes shut, the hint of tears but not outright crying. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wasn't looking forward to it, but I really was planning on it."

"Why didn't you tell me yet? Or were you just going to allude to it indefinitely?"

He rested an elbow on his knee, and his forehead on the back of his hand, before turning to look at her. "Selfish reasons," he said, with a shake of his head. "I wanted you to choose me, and not just choose that you wanted to avoid incarceration or institutionalization. And guilt, really - I have quite a lot of it, that association with me has brought such unpleasantries into your life."

"But would you have done anything differently, if you had known?"

He limbered down a few steps, to move from sitting beside her to kneeling in front of her, and gestured as though he were going to take both of her hands in his, but stopped just short and curled his own hands into fists. After a long breath, he looked up at her.

"Forgive me. I might have tried a dozen different ways to keep your association with me better hidden from the managers and certainly from the authorities, but -" his voice broke, and he continued hoarsely, "but no. I wouldn't have wished you'd never met me, or anything of the kind. I still think I can keep you safe, I still think I can make you happy, so happy that the risks associated with knowing me would be worth it."

He met her eyes, face inches from her own. "Christine, I _love _you - perhaps not wisely, but all too well."

The hum of the fluorescent lights seemed to amplify the silence, and Christine finally broke eye contact, her mind swimming with confusion, with anger at Raoul, anger at Erik, anger at the world that put them all in these positions. She finally took a shaking breath before she spoke, looking at the floor in front of her. "I'm not choosing. Not now. I'm choosing to have more time. Can you live with that?"

"Now who doesn't have a choice?" he replied - but his tone was warm and self-effacing, for once. "You know I have to be. But 'I don't know' is still better than 'no.'"

He looked at her fondly, almost as though her half answer were still an honor to receive, and then just kept looking, his eyes meeting hers, minutes passing in silence, before he finally shook his head slightly, as if to clear it, and said, patiently, "...When you're ready, we should probably keep moving."

He stood, and gradually she stood as well, and met his gaze. He gestured with his left hand, palm swooping as gracefully through the air as a synchronized swimmer's arm through water, his hypnotic voice silent but his entire body saying, "after you."

She slowly nodded, shrugged the purse onto her shoulder, then looked up at him again, and half smiled, before turning, and leading the way down the rest of the stairs and into the next hallway.

* * *

It was simple, in the end.

Down the hallway to the door, a swift walk across a nearly-empty and clearly halfway-renovated pavilion which must have once been a customs processing hall. A few quick steps to avoid open gaps in the floor and diversions around dormant heavy machinery, a keycode or two, and then it was down another set of stairs to the ground floor, solid concrete suddenly beneath her feet, ankles aching so, still in Aminita's boots - and a dozen steps to a van, one of many in a row.

It was a little thing, electric; some cross between a Smart Car and a moving van, and she chucked her suitcase in the back and got into the passenger's seat, as Erik handed her a utility worker's helmet and industrial blue jacket, and then donned one of each himself. He steered the silent vehicle out from under the terminal onto a service roadway, and toward a gate in the distance.

"I don't suppose you ever imagined we'd be driving a glorified golf cart together," Erik said lightly.

"Maybe you underestimate my capacity for imagination." She shrugged.

He raised an eyebrow. "If fulfilling your golf fantasies is what it takes, I could get over my loathing of the world's dullest sport. I'm certain they make black argyle."

Chrisine blushed, "I was... kidding, I guess."

"I was too," he said, and then taking his eyes off the road he turned his head back towards her and smiled sadly. "Mostly."

They passed through the gate without the guard even looking up. Half a mile outside the airport in an industrial neighborhood, Erik pulled over into a small lot and parked the service vehicle. Wordlessly, she retrieved her bag from the back and followed him, across the lot to a small beige sedan. Christine silently noted contrast between this and his normal car - and without even looking from loading their luggage into the tiny trunk, Erik said, "Don't think for a moment that the color isn't killing me. But the thing about bland is that it blends in so very well."

Christine suppressed a smile. "I suppose even you could put up with boring for a rental car."

"Oh," he said distractedly as he reached under the seat, retrieved the key and put it in the ignition, "I bought it. Remotely purchasing a Honda Civic that fell off a truck requires far less paperwork than renting a car at the airport, and is far more reliable than hoping for an unattended vehicle in the right place to commandeer."

Fastening her seatbelt and shutting the door, Christine asked, almost fully knowing the answer, "How long do you expect to own it for?"

"About forty-five minutes." He replied, and she swore she could see a smirk from under his mask. He started the car, and drove towards Tokyo.

* * *

She kept thinking that surely they were downtown, already, but then they'd move into an area with even more densely packed buildings, even taller skyscrapers, and she had to mentally adjust her impression of how large Tokyo was.

They eventually wound onto a road parallel to an elevated train track, brick arches beneath the tracks, with tiny businesses built into the space below each arch, restaurants and bars, mostly, with a strange mix of businesspeople and scruffier looking types on the street. Erik turned left at an underpass and pulled the car over.

"Thirty six minutes," he said, lightly, getting out of the car and gesturing that she should do the same. "Welcome to Shiodome, where executives come to drink their crushing responsibilities away, and criminals come to help alleviate the burdens of their wallets and laptops as well. I give it seven minutes until this car is stolen, making my previous estimate for duration of automobile ownership spot-on."

"What's the prize?" Christine replied dryly.

"You tell me." he said with a pointed look, and picked up both of their bags, and set hers before her definitively.

His tone was flippant, joking, but the look in his eyes was still, somehow, hopeful.

"Bed," she said. Erik seemed wracked by a coughing fit, and she quickly followed up, "Actual sleep in an actual bed. That's the only prize I want right now."

"Mademoiselle's wish is more or less my command," he said, thumping his chest a few times, and gestured to the eastern end of the tunnel. They walked on across a few streets, past a transit station and eventually into an office complex, several skyscrapers clustered around a plaza, with shops and small takeout lunch restaurants on the first level. With a subtle nod, Erik directed her towards the second tallest of the towers.

"The safest place on this planet is concealed within that building, because it is a place that does not exist on any blueprint or floorplan. The only thing standing between you and a good night's sleep in an infinitely secure room is the world's finest security system. Shall we?"

With a nonchalance that was patently false confidence, he held out his hand.

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**It's been a *very* long time since I've updated; thank you so much for all of your reviews and messages urging me to continue! I've had chapters 8, 9 and even a prequel written for ages, and I've just had writers block on the chapters in between - but I decided this week it was time to just make chapter 6 happen, and fingers crossed, I can get chapter 7 written a bit faster. :) Marvelous thanks to Midasgirl, for beta-reading my first drafts and for powerfully insightful feedback. **

**I hope this was worth the wait, and can't wait to hear what you all think. I need motivation for chapter 7, so I can get it written and finally post chapters 8 and 9!**

**~Ver**


	7. Chapter 7

Decisions required certainty; certainty required some feeling and knowledge and confidence in one's own beliefs that everyone on earth seemed to have but her. On a regular day she could decide, with some effort, whether she wanted coffee or tea. The idea of being certain enough to deciding to do anything today seemed impossible. Too many hours spent at an altitude of 35,000 feet and nowhere nearly enough of it sleeping, too much everything to even contemplate; her ankles hurt, her back was sore, her head was killing her, and here was Erik, offering up his heart again, and she could feel her heart aching in her chest, already wincing at the thought of having to refuse him once more.

It would be so much easier to just take his hand.

He would be so happy, and she felt a quiver in her shoulders just imagining it, Erik, happy... but there was no way to give him small affections, no halfway, no way to give him anything short of everything. The idea of taking his hand felt like inviting a dam to burst, with no way to contain it again; it seemed like her only options were to hold him at arm's length or collapse into his love entirely.

"…So are we going to be crawling under this security system's laser beams, or just rappelling down from the ceiling?" She finally said, far too tired to feel any surprise. Of course he was taking her to a nonexistent place in a skyscraper in Tokyo. Of course she, too, was technically on the lam now. She was exhausted and frank acceptance seemed the path of least resistance.

"Neither, actually" Erik said, with a frankness that almost sounded as though he'd taken her seriously. "The advantage of being the one who designs these buildings and their security systems is that I design their virtual trapdoors as well. Let me show off a rather clever bit of technology."

He briskly withdrew his hand, as though no invitation to physical contact had just been offered, and made quick work of taking off his long overcoat, turning it inside out to reveal a grey checked lining, and then putting it back on. "You see, my dear, a rather dull checked jacket. Not quite houndstooth, and not particularly interesting - unless you're a computer that's been designed to do intricate analysis of every frame of video that comes in on a building's security cameras."

"Why does a camera care about a jacket?" she asked, trying not to focus on the absurdity of the very question.

"The statistical photometric recognition behavior in the software is what the client requested; it allows the building's security officers to be alerted when the system recognizes the faces of any known suspects of corporate espionage. The ability of that same system to read a particular QR code and neglect to digitally record anything in a two foot radius of it is an outright exploit on the part of their architect's security firm. Which I also own."

He said the final sentence with something approaching pride, and she nodded, trying to keep up.

"So," he continued, gesturing at the jacket, "this sartorial disappointment is actually a precisely woven matrix-form barcode. The camera records it, the computer controlling the camera reads the barcode's content in the first frame, and then the software suffers a buffer overflow, due to this one case deliberately allowing unsanitized database inputs - and operating as root now, outside the normal software, it executes the remainder of the content in the barcode as a command. The command is that the camera should write neutral-state data for the frames where the coat was recorded."

It had been months since she'd seen him in magician mode, and Christine was surprised to find that she could recognize it now as an act he put on - that she could identify when he was doing his best to impress her, instead of just feeling so overwhelmed and impressionable that his mental leaps felt impossible to catch up with. That she was starting to understand anything about this man seemed even more surprising than the fact that she felt like she'd almost been able to follow the intricacies of system he'd been describing.

"So," she began, wrapping her head around it, as he began walking and she followed alongside, "the pattern on the fabric is a code to tell the video cameras not to save any footage of the coat itself... so the security tapes don't show us entering the building?"

He tilted his head and looked at her. "Clever girl," he said, doing little to hide that he was as much surprised as he was impressed. "I think you underestimate your own aptitude for technology; had you not been gifted with such a voice, you could have made your way in quite a few other careers."

Even now, even after everything, she still felt herself warm to his praise. She could feel herself turning toward it like a flower to the sun, like a child to be patted on the head, and she fought the urge to relax for a moment and bask in the admiration radiating off him almost visibly in the morning light. Trying to feel immune to his tone and gestures, the meaning of his words then struck her as ridiculous.

"...if I didn't have my _voice_?" She bristled, incredulous. "Would you still even be interested in me, if I didn't have my voice? You would have never noticed me in the first place."

"'_Interested'_ in you... That is quite the choice of words, Christine." He looked at her intensely, and she couldn't read the expression in the mismatched eyes locked on her own.

"I'm not wrong," she replied, surprised at how confident and indignant she felt in saying it. "I would have just been another ballerina who dreamt of singing and couldn't, and you'd wouldn't have paid me any more attention than you would have paid a ticket-taker or a set-painter or any other anonymous employee at the Met."

"I will say this exactly once," Erik stopped sharply, and turned to look at her. "A man in my position in life would go _mad_ if he dabbled in impossible what-ifs of alternate pasts. I cannot know what would have happened if we'd met under different circumstances and I cannot change the way in which we've already come to be who we are to one another. The past is outside my ability to change and wondering about it is _pointless_." The last words came out so rigidly resolute that she wondered if this was something he'd often told himself.

"But," he continued, seeming to soften somewhat, "I can tell you what is in my power - I can tell you the future. if you lost your voice tomorrow and never sang another note, I would mourn the loss of the world's most beautiful instrument - and I would still want to spend the rest of my days with the woman it once belonged to. Your voice is something you have; it is not the entirety of what you mean to me. Is that settled?" He asked, flatly, almost as though he were exasperated to have to say it expressly.

Christine looked up from her intense study of the immaculate pavement to meet his gaze, feeling somewhat chagrined, and she nodded and murmured, "Thank you."

He was looking at her curiously, and as they resumed walking she felt him start to speak and then withdraw, several times, before he finally just came out with it and asked quietly, "Was that a... hurdle?"

"What do you mean?"

"The mistaken impression which you apparently had up until several seconds ago, that I cared first and foremost about your vocal instrument. Was that something standing... between us, before?"

Yes," she said softly, feeling an immense vulnerability in the word.

He nodded slowly in understanding, not breaking eye contact with her.

"Do you keep a running list of what those things are?" she finally asked, with a gentleness that couldn't help sounding wary.

"Always," he replied with swift formality, his smile stiff and sad.

She exhaled a long breath in response, but after a minute she smiled, a little, trying to lighten the mood. "That's a tremendous amount of pressure for me to be under."

"Let me assure you, the pressure is worse on my end," he replied, with a tone that was genuine, but twinged with a sympathetic humor that almost felt like an endearing joke between the two of them instead of another round of trenchant self-deprecation. The extent of feelings she had felt toward him in the last 48 hours, from fury to mercy to... to whatever this was, was overwhelming, and -

"So for this to work," Erik said, interrupting her thoughts, "Our physical presence needs to be as forgettable as the digital one. There will almost certainly be a few people in the lobby coming and going, and we need to not cross their level of awareness. Walk into the building as though no one belongs there more than you. Imagine you have been here a hundred times, and you are just walking across the lobby and slightly to the right, toward the elevators that you know by heart are right there. We are going to an office. It is exquisitely dull."

Nodding, numbly, so tired she thought she might nod off if she did it another time, Christine confirmed his instructions and walked just slightly ahead of him into a central courtyard surrounded by new skyscrapers with glittering windows. A canopy of enormous glass squares patched together like blocks of a quilt soared overhead, supported by silver metal pillars that must have been ninety feet tall. Escalators criss-crossed between three levels of plazas and she could see office workers, begining to filter into the area for a day's work.

With a few subtle directions, Erik indicated the appropriate building to enter and trying her best to embody the character of someone who was not nervous, suspicious or anxious, she strode in through the revolving door, her heels clicking on the polished tiles, the whirr of her suitcase wheels echoing in her wake, Erik's footsteps snapping not much further behind. As they waited for the elevator to arrive, she fought the urge to look up at the corners of the room where the cameras probably were; employees in this building probably never thought about the digital eyes in the ceiling, watching - and they definitely didn't look at them.

The elevator arrived and she felt a bit of relief, stepping in, to not be out in the open; even if the security cameras could be made to forget that they'd seen a missing woman and a man in a mask, bystanders who worked in the office building might still remember - and a low, uneasy part of her was still afraid of what Erik might do to ensure their silence.

As the elevator began to ascend, he interrupted her thoughts. "Not much longer now. You're doing quite well, and there's rest ahead."

The front and back walls of the elevator were sleek stainless steel with black glass panels at the sides; were there cameras behind them? Unsure if she was able to actually talk, she finally let her eyes dart from side to side and raised her eyebrows at him, asking a silent question as her eyes met his own.

"Good of you to check, but you can speak freely. None of the monitoring anywhere records audio, just visual - and there aren't any cameras in the elevators or on the floor we'll be going to. Like I said, I designed it from top to bottom."

"That's good, I guess," she said, feeling her shoulders relax. "But... even if we're not on the security tapes, If I were looking for a guy who'd kidnapped a soprano... Erik, the first place I'd look is a building he designed."

"I'm still holding out for 'absconded with,' instead of kidnapped," he said lightly, as he turned away from her, slid open a panel above the elevator buttons and began to fiddle with a keypad there.

"As to the issue you pose, I have designed twelve different skyscrapers across four different continents under seven different architecture firm names," he continued, as though it were very boring, "so even if someone could pull together the appropriate clues to suspect which buildings I had a hand in, it would still take weeks to organize search warrants. And even if the swat team were to sweep the building from roof to basement, looking under every desk and in every maintenance area, they wouldn't find the place where we will be securely residing, because the blueprints show the space to be occupied by the building's air conditioning and ventilation system, the sub-risers for the water pressurization, as well as parts of the infrastructure for the elevators. I just designed each of those elements to be imperceptibly smaller and more efficient, and created space out of thin air. Think of it as the architectural equivalent of stealing the rounding errors on every banking transaction."

"Ok." She finally said, watching the lights above the door show their rise to the 32nd, 33rd, 34th floor. The lights stopped at 35, but the beep indicating they were rising continued three floors further, and she thought, idly, back to the last time she was counting the ascension of an elevator. The doors opened to reveal a dimly lit concrete and dull steel hallway completely unlike the design-concious modern lobby.

"Mechanical level," Erik said, by way of explanation, and led the way out.

Pipes lined the walls and tight bundles of wires ran taught across the ceiling, and each room they entered was filled with large, industrial air conditioners of some kind. Christine supposed she must have known that these things existed somewhere in every building she'd been in, but it had never occurred to her that there were entire floors full of them.

Erik stopped in front of a bank of these air conditioning units, almost like a wall of beige closets full of fans, and began entering what seemed like the thousandth code on the thousandth panel of numbers she'd seen. He flipped a half dozen switches then opened another panel, concealed in the interior wall of the air conditioning unit, and pressed his thumb against the square inch of glass inside. The heavy thunk that followed was quickly lost amidst the noise of the hundreds of fans around them, but the effect was obvious when the entire unit hinged open, like a two foot thick bank vault door, constructed entirely of industrial machinery.

He gestured that she should walk ahead of him and she stepped inside, the concrete passageway within just barely wide enough for the suitcase, and she pulled it behind her with some effort as it scraped the walls, and as he went through some intricate series of steps to close the door behind them. They walked for possibly eight more feet, then turned left, then the flooring abruptly changed from concrete to hardwood and the hallway widened significantly to reveal a small room that almost looked like a foyer.

"Welcome home, for the next thirty-six hours," Erik said, as he squeezed past her and opened the door in front of them.

The contrast between the mechanical level and this room was surreal; it was like stepping out of a factory and into some futuristic vision of a hotel room, rendered at half scale. The room was no more than 12 feet square, and ceiling and walls were all immaculate white, with every corner rounded. One corner held a bed with a meringue-like white duvet, and the other had an lounge chair of streamlined rounded wood with leather cushions and a small ottoman, surrounded by a set of floor to ceiling shelves containing books, a laptop computer, and a large set of headphones.

It was absurd.

All of this was absurd, and she was so tired that surely she was delirious, and Christine let out a laugh, high and strange, without really meaning to.

"The bed is yours, and yours alone, as promised," Erik said sharply, looking away from her.

"That's not it," she said, finally, getting control of her laugher. "I'm really, really tired, and you have a secret room in some industrial blind spot in a skyscraper in Tokyo, and you put an _Eames chair_ in it."

"Ah," he said, and she could sense him trying to lower his defensive walls coming down as abruptly as they'd risen. "Well. This space was built for waiting out extreme circumstances, such as I hadn't even imagined when constructing it - but I did imagine that if I ever needed to make use of it, I would appreciate certain... standards being up to par," he said, relaxing somewhat. "Now, if you'll make yourself comfortable, I need a few minutes to address my increasingly annoying battle wound." She nodded, and he disappeared through a door along the back wall whose seams had barely been visible in the sleek white panels a moment before.

Busying herself with taking off her shoes and opening her suitcase to rummage for the toiletries case, she tried not to worry about the any of the fears and anxieties that were currently circling her like wolves. Erik had a gunshot wound. Raoul had made a bargain with the government to try and imprison Erik that might land her in jail or an institution as a result. She was teetering on the delirium point of sleep deprivation on a new continent, traveling with a man who loved her well beyond any rational measure, for reasons she was still trying to convince herself she deserved. And the man who loved her was impossibly difficult and confusingly wonderful by turns, and he was ugly, and his life had been traumatic, and he needed years - he needed decades, probably - of therapy.

Christine put both her hands over her face and drew a long breath in and focused on not letting her ribs shake, on not giving in. She couldn't deal with the wolves right now.

Food. Surely he had thought of food.

She walked toward the wall near the bookshelves and saw a faintly perceptible line in the wall to the left. She pressed on it, and a cabinet door swung open to reveal a streamlined, polished bar, bottles of fancy liquors lined up and lustrous, gleaming like an art deco cruise liner. She closed it, and tried pressing on the next surface to the left. This opened as well, and revealed a set of shelves of jars, cans, and vacuum-sealed foodstuffs. She turned a few of the cans around and decided that Confit de Canard was definitely not on the menu for breakfast, and finally found a few packages of dried fruit, and opened one, ravenously. The cabinet below revealed dozens of liter bottles of water; she took one and was placing it on the bedside table when the door opened and Erik emerged from the restroom.

He was wearing the same black lightweight wool trousers from his suit, but the white dress shirt and blazer had been replaced by a charcoal grey long-sleeved knit shirt that bulged obviously over the bandage on his arm. Her eyes went straight to it and she tried to avert them, tried not to stare, and wonder, and worry, before she finally just asked him, "Are you ok?"

"Given the multitude of circumstances," he replied wryly, "I suppose a 'yes' is in order, overall. I keep a rather decent first aid kit in each of my safe houses, so I had most of the supplies that I needed, and all I really need now to recover is a good day or two of rest and elevation to allow the hemostasis to really take hold."

"I'm glad," she said, relieved. "Is there anything else you need?"

"Well, if I'm going to keep traveling with you, I should probably add QuickClot to my everyday carry," he said, his tone implying it was a joke.

"Ok," she said, exhausted and growing tired of him talking over her head. "If you don't mind..."

"Please," he said, stepping aside fully and gesturing at the door to the restroom. "If you'd like a shower, the towels are in the cabinet above the sink." He walked across the room to where his suitcase was, and seemed to busy himself in putting things away.

"...When you were building an invisible room to 'wait out extreme circumstances,' you took the time to put in a shower." Her voice was half question, half statement.

"Of course," he said, without looking up from his suitcase. "I'm a sociopath, dear, not a Philistine."

**XXXXXXXX**

Twenty minutes of staring up into the rainfall showerhead mounted into the ceiling of a tiny glass cabinet in the equally tiny bathroom. Twenty minutes of hot water straight to her face and hair, and she was still in this surreal space outside her life. It seemed impossible that she was here, like that at any moment now she would wake up and find herself at home in her walk-up apartment in Brooklyn, piecing together the bits of a dream and realizing like always, in the aftermath, that the oddness had come from the fact that her imagination was limited. But this place was beyond her imagination and unlike most dreams, the architect of the very strange environs she now inhabited was exactly outside the restroom door. Christine took a deep breath, and stepped out, wearing the old-fashioned cotton poplin pajamas she'd found folded crisply at the bottom of her suitcase.

The back of Erik's head was just visible over the top of the elaborate armchair, and his hair was still so sleek and unmussed after hours of traveling that Christine found herself wondering for the first time if his hair was a wig, and felt immediately uncomfortable at the thought. He did not look up, seemingly engrossed in the slim computer now open in his lap.

She rubbed the towel across her hair with flat palms, feeling almost a little relieved that he hadn't had the infinite foresight to provision a blow dryer as well, and leaned against the doorframe, watching his fingers fly across the keyboard of a laptop instead of a piano, for once.

"What are you working on?" She asked, idly.

"One moment," he said, emphatically typing a few more lines. "And.. voila, success. Well! That's terribly satisfying."

"What is?" She asked, with a gentle smile. She was so exhausted that for a lovely moment, the entire scene struck her as domestic and charming.

He spun the chair around and looked over his shoulder at her with undisguised pride. "It looks to all the world like Ms. Christine Daae's credit card was just swiped at a hotel in Adelaide. Your CIA, FBI, and whatever agents of the Commonwealth they wish to enlist will have an excellent clue to follow up on the Australian continent now."

Erik's eyes gleamed with pride and affection, his desire for her praise and approval suddenly as obvious to her as her own need had been before, but she didn't have time to think about that because -

"How did you get my credit card number?"

He whirled around in the chair to face her fully, now, and stood up, setting his chin disdainfully. "I thought you would be appreciative of the news, but if you're not, perhaps it's time we get some rest."

It seemed like every time he spoke, his voice was the swell of a massive wave and it took every bit of alertness she had not to be swept away entirely in the direction he wanted her to go. Erik wanted her to drop the subject, and she resisted, leaned forward against the doorframe. "Did you go into my account?"

His eyes narrowed, and his defense came swiftly. "You used your father's first name as your password, Christine. A password I could guess on the second try is not so much security, as it is an exercise in fundamental fact recollection."

"What was your first guess?" she asked in a low voice, more interested in accusing him of his crime than in actually finding out what the answer was.

His eyes locked onto hers and the moment had suddenly escalated to brinksmanship. "...'Angel,'" he said, his gaze suddenly steely and mirthless.

"I had that account before I ever _met_ you." Christine replied with sudden defensiveness, before her exhausted brain realized that by rights, she owned no explanation of her passwords to anyone. "Erik, every time I think I can trust you, it turns out you're just looking out for yourself and thinking of me as a token in a board game. Did you think about how I might feel when I found out you'd cracked my password? Did you go into my email too?"

Erik crossed his arms. "I'll ignore for the moment the wildly irresponsible implication that you've used the same password everywhere, and address the question at hand. No, I have never attempted to read your email. I have always been terrified of what I might find you had written to your - I'm sorry, would you say 'fiance,' or just 'boyfriend,' Christine? I dislike being imprecise with my words. What exactly would you call that young idiot you'd rather be with right now?"

She stared at him, numb, shocked, and furious.

"By all means," he said, glaring at her, "please, just stand there looking horrified."

"Stop!" she finally choked out. "Why are you doing this? We had a really nice morning."

"I might ask why you had done _any_ of this!" he hissed in return. "I told you I _loved_ you, and you certainly didn't tell me to take my sad case elsewhere; you just nodded, and demurred, and said anything but 'no' in a thousand half-hearted ways. You said you couldn't bear to lose me because you loved our lessons and I clung to it like a lovesick idiot_._"

His eyes were almost glowing now, with pain, and she couldn't even form words over the lump of misery in her throat before he went on.

"I tried to give you everything! I told you of hopes so pathetically earnest that I _burn_ in shame to think of them now. And all the time, you just said didn't know what you felt, and you couldn't live without your _Angel..._ but you certainly needed more time to spend with your dear friend from your summer seaside days. Christine, does that boy know your _soul_?"

"I don't know that I know it myself!" she cried, tears pushing trails down her face. Her chest was shaking with sobs, and she hoped that her tears would melt his anger, give them some time to discuss this - but Erik just took a long breath in, then picked up the chair with his good arm and strode toward the door. He deposited it in the hallway outside, maneuvering the door with some difficulty, then returned for the ottoman and wordlessly flipped the lightswitch on his way out, plunging the tiny room into complete darkness and slamming the door behind him.

Numbly, Christine felt her way toward the bed, slipped under the covers, and let her body finally give in to outright sobbing. She was completely overwhelmed; her entire chest rang with a despairing ache, and she found herself missing the days when she'd been naive and desperate enough to believe in _angels_.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

**Author's Note: You are wonderful, gorgeous, insightful readers for writing the kind of feedback you have so far, and so much of it has helped me make decisions about how things will play out between our dear heroes. Thank you for your reviews and PMs, they were a wonderful motivation to write this chapter much more quickly than the last one!**

**~Ver**


	8. Chapter 8

_Manhattan_

_Nearly a year earlier..._

...The voice had been gone for six days.

She was beyond beginning to worry if she'd imagined it in the first place, and was roughly at the point of wondering if Steinhardt's student health insurance covered anti-schizophrenia meds. Her new role at the opera house was too uncertain and improbable to even think of asking for help there, but she needed help, clearly - because the truth of the matter was that she no longer heard a voice in her head, and she _missed_ it. Every rational circuit in her brain urged her to be grateful for her apparent return to sanity, but she was hollow and desperate with grief, aching at the loss of the one thing that had ever made her feel whole, and normal… That alone would be enough to turn her head entirely, but beyond the feeling of being safe, and cared for, and content... those few moments when the voice had joined her in song, she had felt _glorious_.

Was this how addicts felt in withdrawal?

Christine sat on an old fashioned piano stool in one of the university's solo rehearsal rooms - little more than a small soundproof closet, really - waiting, her head in her hands, alternating between frantic hope and counting off perfectly logical realistic reasons for her apparent break with reality. Religious upbringing. Anniversary of her father's death. Stress of starting grad school. Stress of Mayor Bloomberg cutting funding for the program that provided her scholarship. Trying to make ends meet by chasing an impossible dream to be in the chorus at the Met while still in school. Sleep deprivation. Malnutrition.

Yet somehow she kept coming back to the only possible conclusion: she was losing it, in a frightening and pathetic way, desperately dreaming of some guardian angel to save her from mediocrity and loneliness. Her watch showed just past 11pm; rehearsals had finished nearly four hours ago, and she had been waiting here ever since. If she left now, she could get the last L train, before the subway shifted to the night-owl schedule. Christine stared at the egg-crate foam lining the walls of the room, noting how rehearsal spaces and insane asylums seemed to have similar design aesthetics, and finally stood up, because if she was going to cry in an empty room, she'd rather do it at home. She grabbed her satchel and swung it over her shoulder, turning to leave.

"You will have your wish," the voice said, without greeting. The noise reverberated in her ears, bell-like, filling them with a sound so beautiful that any skeptical thoughts she had ever entertained retreated entirely.

"Wait!" She said, heart suddenly pounding in her chest and bursting with joy all at once, twirling on her heel away from the door, her eyes darting about the tiny room, looking for some sign of where the voice was coming from. The room fell silent again and she went on, quickly, "I'm sorry - I'm sorry I asked to see you. It was just so hard to believe... but please - please! Hearing you is better than nothing. You were gone for so long, and I missed you so much…"

The stronger moments of wanting to know what on Earth was going on dissolved completely, sublimated into an unslakable _need_ that she couldn't put logic to.

"It was too long," the voice admitted, "but I will apologize in person."

"Oh..." her voice trailed off, and she was suddenly wrought with nervousness. "I thought... I thought I'd ruined… everything. You said it would all be over, if I ever saw you... And then you were gone, and I thought you'd never come again, and I was so sorry..." The silence stretched out, without any further response from the voice, and she suddenly felt awkward and eager. "So you're going to visit me?"

"Actually," the voice replied in a tone that seemed both trepidatious and amused, "It is you, who will be visiting me."

...And although Christine Daae knew that an excellent way to wind up floating in the East River was to go somewhere on the advice of the voices in one's head, she found herself following the instructions, feeling a profound sense of peace as she walked toward the maintenance area at the rear of the building, feeling that everything was natural, and inevitable, and right, at last, as the elevator began descending without her even touching the buttons. It was almost like floating, each step perfectly following the last as smooth as skating on ice, and when the elevator doors opened on the lowest level, the grey Town Car was idling there as the voice had promised.

The doors unlocked with a smooth noise as she approached and got in the backseat; the uniformed driver was silent, and Christine looked at him for a second, wondering if there was something to say, something she'd forgotten. She absent-mindedly put on her seat belt, and as the buckle clicked, the chauffeur moved the car into drive and they slid down Houston to Lafayette to Park Avenue, northbound.

It was too late for traffic, and so the car moved uptown with ease, the driver's movements so smooth and methodical that Christine was reminded of a spacecraft gliding on autopilot back to the mothership. The windows were heavily tinted, such that she could barely make out street signs, but she could tell when they turned right, abruptly, to swing around Grand Central Station. Somewhere past 50th street the car turned left, and then eventually right again; she caught sight of Columbus Circle and then the turns came too quickly for her to keep track of, before the car turned sharply left and down a ramp into an underground parking garage.

The driver pulled down the visor to enter a long series of numbers on an electronic device mounted there. A glass square at the end of the device glowed red, and he placed his right thumb on it; the light scanned across his thumb and then changed to green, and the metal mesh entry gate lifted. As though fingerprint scanning were a perfectly normal way to enter a parking garage, the driver put the visor back up and aimed the car toward the ramp to the lower levels.

A wary instinct began to grow in Christine's chest, pulling her out of the cocoon-like sense of safety she had felt earlier, as she was nearly floating out of the rehearsal room.

"I'm sorry," She said, as though she were interrupting a stranger on the street. "Excuse me - where are we going? I - I think I want to get out."

The uniformed driver was silent, and continued piloting the car down the spiraling series of ramps - were they four levels underground now? Five? None of the levels had any cars on them, and she realized that even if the car hadn't been soundproofed, there was no one around to hear her, if she decided to shout.

"I'm sorry - I think I changed my mind. Can you just take me back?" she said, urgency growing in her voice, the silly dreams of an angel gone, and the reality of being in a strange car underground coming to her like waking up on the edge of a cliff.

The car halted in front of a large metal grate, and Christine immediately undid her seat belt and tried the door, yanking on the handle when it refused to move. She saw the driver repeat the process of entering a code on the visor, and the grate slowly began to lift, revealing a shadowy additional area of parking. Driving faster now, the car flew across it, around a corner, into a tunnel, around a corner again, and it seemed like they'd driven further than a block underground now.

She thought of leaping over the seat and - what, grabbing the wheel? Attacking the chauffeur? At the speed they were going, it would certainly cause an accident, and what if he was armed, and... how big could this parking garage be? She wasn't even sure what direction they were headed, she'd lost track of the bends of the tunnel and in the ramp down in the first place and -

The car eased to a stop in front of a silver door with no doorknob, set into one of the shadowy concrete walls. Christine squinted, wondering if she was meant to get out, or to wait for someone to come out of the door, and she was trying to decide if there was anything in her bag she could use as a weapon, when the electronic beeping began. It grew louder, more insistent, and she realized it was a phone - nearby - louder, louder - and in the leather pocket of the seat ahead of her, she found a silver mobile embossed with "V"s; its chevron-shaped screen indicating a private number as the incoming call.

The phone pulsed again in her hand, and mid-ring she hit the button on the left and somewhat dazedly asked, "Hello?"

"Christine," the voice said in a tone that was distinctly pleased. "Thank you for being patient with me."

Her urge to run was somehow gone; the voice was warm and imparted upon her the same buzzing sense of protection and specialness that it had every time she had ever heard it before. And she wanted so badly to know why, to know what the voice was, and what was happening.

"I can't tell if this is a test," she finally said, with a kind of despair that sounded hollow and needy to her own ear. "I just wanted to see you, to understand the voice, but now I'm in a strange car and I'm underground somewhere, and… Angel, I'm so scared..."

"I'm not trying to test anything, Christine, least of all your faith in me. I will explain everything..." and here the voice paused. "...You will know everything soon."

"Please," Christine replied, closing her eyes and sighing, half fatigue and half entranced, leaning her forehead against the front seat of the towncar, so rapt in speaking with the voice, again, at last, that she didn't care what the driver thought of her.

"Look in the pocket where you found the phone. There should be a box with a key inside. The key to just about everything, as it were," and here the voice let out a laugh, though it wasn't particularly funny. But she did find a slim orange box in the seat pocket, and she slid the lid off to find a patterned scarf - but no key. She took the bit of silk by the corner and shook it, and a shiny rectangle of black plastic tumbled out, unmarked, like a blank credit card. Oh, she thought. That kind of key.

Following the voice's instructions she got out of the car - the door conveniently unlocked now - and walked to the metal door in the concrete wall. The card slid neatly into the electronic-looking panel to the left of the door; a green LED illuminated, and the card was spat back out at her as the metal door rescinded into the wall, revealing a small, obsidian-floored lobby and an open elevator. Christine shrugged her bag up further on her shoulder, and stepped in, wondering which floor she was to push. But there were no buttons in the elevator; just another silver slot, a black line on an otherwise sleek pane of metal. Since the voice had said it was the key to everything, she slid the dark card into the reader, and the elevator began to climb.

She had never before realized how integral the sounds of an elevator were to her comfort in them, and in the absence of the bell chime at each floor, began counting to herself. "One Mississippi, two mississippi..."

At thirty-two Mississippi, it slowed and by thirty-four, it halted. The elevator doors slid open, exposing a long foyer with a round table and a massive vase of calla lilies at its center and an imposing lacquered door at the end. Walking towards it she found yet another card reader, this one a silver box with a vertical slot, and she pushed the card in like a letter into a mailbox. A heavy thunk sounded, but the door didn't move. Christine looked over her shoulder, and then up, hoping for some kind of intervention, but it didn't come, and finally the obvious occurred to her. She lifted her hand, and pressed it to the door, and it swung open, heavy and thick.

She had walked into a space so dazzling, the only thing she could recall that was similar was planetarium - but as her eyes focused, she realized, the walls on all sides were glass, and outside was a cityscape dotted with stars.

It was nice - it was sparsely lit, but she could easily make out that she was standing in a sleek, modern apartment, dark tones and clean lines, straight out of some magazine about minimalist architecture - and it was just a human residence. Christine knew it was insane to be disappointed, and she was anyway. She had been hoping for an _angel_. What was she doing here?

She walked a little further in, acutely aware of the sound of her own footsteps, wondering if she should take her shoes off, when she looked left and saw him.

A man.

Or the dark outline of one. He was standing back, just out of the light, silhouetted by the night sky and the dazzling city view outside the wall of windows. She froze, and he was already so still that she wondered if the figure was actually a statue.

"Don't be afraid - please, don't be afraid." And the voice came from a mortal source at last. The tall, thin man walking stiffly towards her - was it his words she'd clung to, his music she'd soared upon?

Christine dropped her bag.

"I know - I know this must have all been very confusing. But I promise you, you are safer now than you've ever been... and I am so thankful to have you here... " He walked towards her slowly, his palms in front of him in a gesture that suggested he was calming a frightened animal. But the hands he held in front of him shook, almost as though she were the dangerous one, and then, with one more step, he moved into the light.

Any other detail she might have noticed in that moment was eclipsed by the glare of the halogens hitting the white mask that covered half his face.

She instinctively took a step backward, and he froze. Her pulse was suddenly coming very quickly and all logical parts of her brain were urging her to run but her heart - her heart recognized the voice, and craved it like a last gasp of oxygen. She retreated no further; and seeing this, the man seemed to calm, to try and take a deep breath, and then speak, but no words came. He seemed to try again, this time gesturing a bit - hands in thin black leather gloves seeming to express his frustration - and then his body seemed to relax, as if he were laying down his previous attempts, and he said with quiet wonder, "I cannot believe that you're here. It's you, and you're here."

A shaky pause, as his words sunk in... and Christine whispered, her voice horrified and dry, "What?"

"I... I don't even know how to begin... and I've spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about what I would say to you..." The man gestured widely at the room, and she registered for the first time the dozens, hundreds, dizzying amounts of flowers in vases covering shelves, tables, windowsils, seemingly every horizontal surface of the room. "It's for you, all of it, Christine."

And her whole chest felt as though it were collapsing, wretchedly, unsteady ground beneath her and a high pitched ringing in her ears, as the reality of the situation seemed to fall devastatingly into place, still baffling, nothing easily identified - but while Christine did not know what was actually going on, she knew very well what was not.

"Who are you?" She heard herself say, low and accusing, wounded.

"I am... sorry," the man said, as though he were, himself, regret embodied.

"The voice..." she swallowed the lump in her throat, dizzy now, "the voice told me it was the Angel of Music."

"I must ask you to forgive me," he said steadily, the melodicism of his words suddenly so seductive that it was all she could do to not sink into it entirely. "I cannot tell you how many times I wished I had never said it. But it seemed to make you so happy, and I couldn't take it back... and I found myself so quickly unable to do _anything_ that might risk losing you..."

So strange, to hear her own fear of loss echoed back at her.

He lowered his head, and then, his whole body, falling to one knee, his head bowed in reverence. "You are the voice, and I am the poor man who worships it. I am Erik." he finally said in blindingly beautiful tones, looking up at her with undisguised adoration. His eyes were mismatched colors.

Christine swayed and took another half step back, unable to process the scene of the man kneeling abjectly before her. "I'm not that good," she said, closing her eyes, trying to steady herself, "I don't know why you would bother - why you would lie like that, but I can't sing that well, and I… I think I should go."

"Because," and here he paused with great significance, as though he were steeling himself, "I love you."

Her eyes flew open.

He was swaying forward, as though he'd been punched in the stomach by his own words, coming out all in a rush now. "I have fallen in love with you. I love everything about you, beyond all logic. You consume me."

"I..." she said weakly, feeling bewildered by who had the upper hand here, "_I_ consume... _you?_"

His eyes went wide, and his gaze became as intent as a detective who had just found a clue, as he said, softly and resolutely, "_Christine_... Do you mean to say... Do you feel...?"

And Christine realized with a sinking feeling below her ribs that what she was seeing spelled out across this stranger's face was hope.

He put one hand over his heart, as though it were a shock just to feel it beat.

"I don't know what's real." she said hopelessly, "I don't know you. I - I need - I don't know where I am."

But he didn't seem to hear the growing fear in her voice, and just leaned forward with his heart in his eyes, tentative and logical and so heartfelt it made her wilt to witness it, as he continued, "You said... oh, if you feel one hundredth for me what I feel for you, I may die of happiness in this very moment." His shoulders rose, and he drew a shaky breath, "Do I... consume you the way you consume me? Am I that lucky?"

The moment was heavy with consequences, and paths away from a situation she didn't even understand were looming in front of her with irrevocability. For a strange second - desperate and reckless and _lonely_ - Christine just wanted to breathe, "Yes," and collapse into the obvious yearning before her, wanted to feel what it was like to at least make someone else happy, because it had been so long since she had been happy herself. Hearing the voice had made her question her sanity, but the notes and the timbre itself been the first light in her life in _years_... but now it appeared the voice was a… a man, who wore a mask, who had lied to her.

"I don't know who you are," she finally whispered, truthfully. "I lived for the voice that I heard in my dressing room. I would have done anything for it - the music was everything, I felt more than I had ever had... But it was a voice that almost seemed to come from inside my head, and there was music, and an angel... I thought I was going insane, and I almost didn't care..." She stopped herself, abruptly. "I can't deal with this."

"Forgive me." the man said sadly, sinking back on his heels and increasing the distance between them once again. "I beg you. The circumstances are lamentable, but the feelings that drove them are so real I may die of them. I am at your mercy."

A silence stretched out, as Christine tried to grapple with what this could possibly mean, but her thoughts were mired in the anguish and shame at having given in so easily to what she should have known was duplicity. She wanted to run, to forget she'd ever needed or adored or _whatever_ it was she felt for the voice, and return to the safety of the prior world where no one paid any notice to her and she had been all alone - but at least she had been no one's fool.

The onslaught misery was swift, and it was with despair that she finally said, "You must have thought so little of me, to tell such lies. You must think I am so worthless -"

"Christine!" he exclaimed, horrified, interrupting her. "I think you are _wonderful_…"

His cry rang out in the silence that followed, and the frantic look upon the unmasked half of his face suggested the dismay of a man whose situation had rapidly gone a different direction than he had intended.

"Everything I have done," he began steadily, "I have done out of love. I will beg your forgiveness for claiming to be divine - but you must know that I only said it to stay close to you. I've never… gone about anything like this before, and I wanted to give you the only thing I had that might _ever_ make you love me… and I could think of no other way to give you my music… please don't hate me for my deceit."

It was all too much, the words of love from the voice so beloved, but the lie, the man - and what did the mask conceal? What kind of apartment was entered from a heavily secured basement? She didn't have the codes to lift any of the gates and she was trapped here.

"Sir…" she began, the shakiness of her voice echoing in her ears.

"My name is Erik, please - say it," came the impassioned reply.

"Erik," she began, but at this he closed his eyes briefly, in a rhapsodic gesture that seemed out of place, as though he were having a different conversation than the one she was trying, anxiously, to participate in. "Erik, I don't know where I am…"

"You are in my home. 15 Central Park West, not terribly far from the Met. It's a nice building; no one could possibly find fault with it. Let me show you - you would be so happy here."

She felt her eyes widen at the permanence of his suggestion, and stepped backward again, wincing in pain as her leg collided with a coffee table. The sound of glass breaking startled her and she turned to see one of the vases of flowers had fallen to the floor and shattered.

"Leave it," he commanded briskly - and then, with more warmth, "What must I say, Christine, to make you forgive me?"

The smell of the flowers was overpowering, thick and sweet, like standing in a greenhouse, and she thought, for a moment, of the desperation behind buying so many bouquets, of somehow imagining that one rose or even one dozen wasn't enough, but perhaps if he emptied an entire florist's shop of its contents... that perhaps the hundred and first bouquet would make a difference in how she felt... the sad earnestness of such an act made her chest wrench.

"I don't know you," she finally said, as gently as she could, still bewildered and overwhelmed. "I knew the voice, but now... I need to go home. I could only hate you if you kept me here against my will."

A silence hung between them, as her words seemed to reach him at last, and then he nodded.

"What you must think of me," he said, with a sudden propriety that seemed almost formal and removed, and she felt the desperate urgency of his emotions rapidly withdraw as he stood, pulling gently at his cufflinks to straighten them. "Of course. Let me show you the way. My driver, César, will take you to any address you'd like." He turned and walked a few steps ahead, and it was with his back to her that she heard the first few notes.

This man was still the voice, and he was singing...

The music was like water, like waves washing over her, like sinking into a warm bath and being surrounded... reality suddenly seeming as distant and blurred as sounds heard from under the surface of a swimming pool. The music surged and rushed through her head with an intoxicating thrumming, and she felt her thoughts stretching out, suddenly viscous, her consciousness itself seeming to pour slowly, honeyed and sleepy.

He was facing her now, walking toward her with open arms, singing more gloriously than he ever had in their lessons... and it was as though she had been anxious and in pain her entire life without knowing it, and his voice, at last, was the drug that could abate the pain of reality, of living. It was entrancing... Her heart swelled at the beauty, at the golden quality of each note, and she felt whole and normal and... happy... Her last conscious thought was that her legs were feeling tired and perhaps she would just rest on the divan and listen a little longer.

**XXXXXXXX**

Grey light, wan and weak, was starting to come into the room.

Even under a layer of blankets, she was cold, so cold - and as her mind slowly began to take in details, eyes flickering open, Christine realized with horror that she was not at home in her own bed. Shoulders shaking, she threw back the covers, relieved to find the bed otherwise empty and herself fully dressed in her jeans and sweater, save her shoes which were lined up neatly by the foot of the bed. The frantic feeling began to subside, her heart rate slowly sank back to normal, and cold again, she pulled the down comforter back up around her, wrapping herself in it like armor against the reality of the situation she'd woken up into.

The crack of light filtering in through the draperies was barely enough light to see by, and she fumbled at the wall by one side of the bed and then the other, before finally finding what felt like a light switch - it appeared to do nothing at first, then she heard a whirring noise, and the floor to ceiling wall of draperies began to pull back automatically, across the length of the room and around the corner, to reveal two walls of large windows and the faint outline of a pre-dawn Manhattan outside.

She was probably still in his home... _his_, and at this a shiver ran through her. What sort of man hid behind a mask and spun worlds of lies for wretches like her?

Trying to ground herself, to figure out what to do, she examined her surroundings... the bedroom she was in was easily larger than her entire apartment, and near the windows there was a small sitting area with a coffee table. And on it, folded neatly, was the silk scarf that the key card had been wrapped in last night, and she wondered uncomfortably if this was a... gift. The view of the park before her spoke of ridiculous wealth; was this all some sick game by a bored billionaire? Seduce an orphan and melt her mind with tricks?

The urge to run was growing her chest and she slipped on her shoes and went for the door, pausing before opening it, as though he might be just outside - but the hallway was empty. The doors branching off of it were all closed, and she decided the one at the end was likely the exit, but upon tentatively walking through it she found what looked to be a bedroom, with even higher ceilings than the one she'd come from. There was a dresser, and what looked to be an entire wing of closets paneled in dark wood, contrasting with the textured slate-colored walls - but oddly, no bed... Yet there was a wooden box in the middle of the room, maybe seven feet square and two feet tall, in some polished espresso color to match the closets... On the side, an embossed metal logo read, "Quantum Sleeper Unit."

It looked like a king-sized coffin. Was he... sleeping, in there?

Seduction suddenly seemed like the least of her worries, and in frantic fear she tiptoed out of the room, back down the hallway, desperately hoping that the other end would be an exit, away from the serial killer or whoever it was whose house she was in. Anxiety flooded her body, and even if her rapid footsteps made no noise on the thick carpet, she wondered if _he_ could hear her heartbeat screaming panic with every beat. At the end of the hallway she opened the door as quietly as she could, looking back over her shoulder at the master bedroom - only to enter the room and find the man she thought she'd been fleeing was sitting there before her, engrossed in playing the piano in a living room lined with dark lacquered bookshelves.

Could there truly be music on earth so beautiful that she no longer cared what happened to her?

The thought crept seductively into her head, and floated there, for a moment, threatening to eclipse all logic as it had the night before, but the terror and confusion coursing through her body kept her from sinking back into the music. He took no notice of her, seemingly absorbed in the notes he was playing, and re-playing, as though he were trying to get something just right, focusing on a few bars of the harmony. The piano was enormous - a full concert size - and she noticed it actually had an extra octave at the bass end, the additional keys painted matte black.

The dozens of bouquets of flowers were gone, but she could tell it was the same room she'd been in the night before, which meant the door was... there, across the room from the piano. There was no way to get to it without him seeing. To her right was a row of french doors that must lead to some sort of balcony - but this many stories up, the chances of someone hearing her if she screamed was slim. She was completely trapped.

A desperate thought rose, that even if she couldn't get away from all of this strangeness, she could at least see who she was here with, and it almost felt like she was watching herself advance softly across the room, the thundering notes of the piano drowning out her footsteps as she approached the figure in black, reaching over his shoulder for the mask.

The cry of anguish shattered her eardrums, and then there was chaos and horror as the man who was not an angel turned to reveal a face of atrocity, lunging for her and crying out condemnation and fury as he grabbed her offending hands, and she sobbed and struggled and his hands dug into her wrists, trying to force her to claw at his face with them. The reviling words replaced the music, a symphony of malevolence and pain filling her ears and even as she shut her eyes to at least be free of the sight of the horrific face screaming at her, she heard him insist that she feast her eyes upon the monster she had revealed. She opened them again and saw eyes full of pain staring at her, and he faltered, for just a second - long enough that, twisting, she was able to wrench herself free. Still gripping the mask she ran at full speed for the glass-paneled French doors, throwing them open and stumbling out onto an enormous terrace under a row of arches three stories high, surrounded by a black wire railing at waist height, Central Park and the skyscrapers beyond looming just over the edge.

Christine ran.

Later, she would think that maybe it was just the latter half of the instinct for fight or flight; maybe it was the twisted logic that it would be better to hurl herself off the 34th floor than be strangled by a man who seemed filled with murderous rage, but in the moment she was just running straight for the edge, as quickly as she could, imagining the moment of relief she would feel as she dove over the railing, knowing she was beyond the grip of the man who was filling her with such terror. Ten feet away, five feet away, faster, she began to leap -

His body collided with hers, wrapping around her and pulling her down, his back smashing into the railing with a painful crack and breaking the impact for her, and both of them hitting the smooth stone of the terrace floor.

He was shaking, nearly hyperventilating, and the look of devastation - of abject _fear_ on the deformed face before her made Christine realize, with a sinking awareness, that he did not want to kill her, at all, and she had nearly jumped to her death.

She was going to be ill.

Pressing her palms and forearms against the cool stone floor, she willed her stomach not to heave, dizzy and disoriented, and he slowly turned his head to face away from her, still not moving from where he lay. The shaking of his back belied the silence, and eventually the sounds of his sobs rang out, grief and wretchedness echoing above the silence of the city at dawn.

"My mask... _please_," he finally said in a voice of misery, not even looking back at her, extending one hand in her direction... and then she was crying too.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

_Tokyo_

_Present Day._

Christine lay awake in the darkened room, restless with memories. Would they ever do anything but cause one another pain? Even after months had gone by, she still ached with regret at her reaction to his face, the stranger she was shuddering in horror at then was a man she knew now had lived a lifetime of pain. She missed the happy innocence of those lessons, of herself being intoxicated enough on their interactions to almost believe in angels - but almost more so, she missed the days of him believing in _her_, of each of them not assuming the worst of one another.

Curling up, and trying once more to sleep with a heavy heart, she wondered if there was a way on earth they could ever forgive one another and be happy - realizing just as she drifted off that, for the first time, she was contemplating a future where they were together, happy or not.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

**Author's note: Thank you so much for your reviews and feedback - I can't wait to hear what you think of this flashback, as quite a few of you wonderful readers have been asking for more music and more of the history between these two. I wanted particularly to show how much both of them have grown and changed.**

**Also, I've started putting up some of the pictures I use as inspiration for the locations when writing! If you'd like to see Erik's Manhattan apartment, a first class suite on an A380 and more, you can find my posts on either tumblr or livejournal at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com or veroniqueclaire*livejournal*com . Particularly as they get into some of the more exotic locations in upcoming chapters, there should be some lovely images for you there. Enjoy and please, as always, reviews are the reason I write - I'd love to hear what you think!**

**~Ver**


	9. Chapter 9

She hadn't done a damn thing wrong, and he was going to have to walk through the door and apologize.

...Without a clock in the room it was hard to tell how long she'd rested, when sleep finally came - but now she was awake and significantly less exhausted; she had probably slept the better part of her first day in Tokyo. The thought sounded strange - for all she knew, this might be her only day in Tokyo - but that would depend upon the plans and concerns of one unacceptably difficult man.

In the moment of an argument, his voice - inevitably raised, sharp, seething - always seemed to cut her to the bone, and from the awful morning she'd first unmasked him to every fight thereafter, she had always spent hours in the aftermath of any confrontation feeling gutted and miserable. Sometimes she felt guilty for what she had done to upset him, sometimes she felt devastated that someone who professed to love her could be so hateful - but today she only felt indignation, pure and bright.

Christine paced the tiny room. It felt like strength, to be stubborn; to be resolute in the knowledge that she was in the _right_; that he had invaded her privacy, then _he_ was the one who had been defensive and lashed out when she had confronted him about it. Erik had done wrong by her, twice.

She was angry. She had every right to be. She had no emotional reserves left for dealing with him being completely unreasonable.

...And yet each time her mind tried to tell her that the only thing she was feeling was righteous frustration, the thought rang hollow, like a feeble attempt at convincing herself she wasn't hurt, or trying to prevent herself from being hurt again - when the truth was that she was aching. He seemed so _cruel_ when he was angry - the venomous tone of his voice always seemed to reveal outright hatred, just below the surface - and she wondered bleakly if at this point any feelings he had for her would always be poisoned with the contempt of rejection.

She should be sick and tired of all of this, and yet somehow she just wished he were there so they could just talk, and try for the hundredth time to patch up her hurt feelings and his impossible pride. She just wished - with a dull emptiness that felt insecure and vulnerable - that Erik was there, period.

Dammit. God dammit.

Everything was just so much _easier_ with Raoul. He was so easygoing and casually self-assured that they had always been able to gently talk through any misunderstanding. When she turned down invitations to join the Changy family and their friends for the holidays in Gstaad or St Barts, Raoul was understanding - even if he didn't really understand her discomfort around the Vanderbilts and Kennedys and other families he'd grown up with. When a lesson running over had made her _hours_ late for a dinner date, Raoul was disappointed but sympathetic, always happy to see her, proud of her for working so hard.

...And when he'd plainly asked if he should be jealous of her complex relationship with her musical teacher, Christine had told him he'd had nothing to fear, and Raoul - sweet, kind, trusting Raoul - had believed her. He'd been so certain of her feelings that he had started cutting deals to try and save her.

A surge of feeling rose up in her chest that might have felt dangerously like guilt, if she had been willing to examine it - but for once, she very much was not. So much had happened in the last two days that it felt like she deserved a vacation from self-reproach. Christine wanted to heal this latest argument with Erik, and get on with wherever they were going next. She didn't want have to think about why. An hour ago she had been staring at the door, frustrated that she would almost certainly have to be the one to offer the olive branch and go outside and get him - but now she had an ideal that felt more comfortably like compromise.

There were precious few things that could pull Erik back to earth when he had flown into one of his rages. Touching him was one; her hand on his shoulder always seemed to crystallize and shatter the armor of his anger. But that wasn't possible without going outside and starting an apology, and she had some obstinate wish for him to come to her, to apologize first. The only other thing that had ever seemed to get through to Erik when he was in his blackest of moods was her voice... and she was overdue for doing her voice exercises anyway...

The acoustics in the saferoom were surreal; the glazed white walls were made of some kind of polymer that seemed to be the exact opposite of the foam acoustic treatment that normally lined rehearsal spaces. She began an old warm-up and heard reverberations and echoes coming from odd angles of the room, and while the ringing didn't sound unpleasant, it was decidedly suboptimal and irritating. What did sound outright unpleasant was her voice itself - even to her own ears, the notes sounded raspy in her upper register, and she could almost physically feel the dryness in her vocal cords from the hours and days on airplanes.

She finished the warm-up in questionable form, and Erik still didn't walk through the door.

Christine took a bottle of water from one of the cabinets and attempted to rehydrate before beginning the exercises anew. It seemed impossible that her voice could fail to reach him as it had before... how many rehearsals had begun with bruised feelings on both sides, only for his defenses to literally melt before her eyes, the rigidity flowing out of his shoulders until his eyes glistened with remorse and renewed affection, once she began to sing?

But she progressed through the exercises a full second time, and then a third, alone. She began to wonder if he was outside, refusing to enter as a match of wills - or if he had ventured out somewhere. He could be gone entirely, and she could be singing to herself in an empty room on the empty mechanical floor of a skyscraper half the world away from everyone else she knew.

It was hard to tell if she was feeling exasperated, or stubborn, or... lonely... but she kept singing. Then, having well and thoroughly finished with the standard warm-up, she moved on to songs of her general practice repertoire, as she idly strolled around the room trying to find a single corner where the acoustics didn't drive her crazy. The center of the room seemed the best, but in such a small space she kept bumping into the bed and finally just flopped sideways across it, frustrated and discouraged and quite ready to be done with this song and give up entirely. The notes came easier, lying on her back, and staring up at a ceiling as smooth and blank as the walls, she briefly remembered Erik bolstering her confidence months ago, with stories of Carlotta having to use tricks like this in the recording studio to hit the high notes that Christine herself could reach while cooking dinner and idly humming.

The noise from the dozens of fans whirring outside the room reached her ears several seconds before Erik entered her field of vision, looming over her, and she realized that he had come back into the room. He had returned to the rigid white mask she was accustomed to seeing him wear, but even with his face more concealed, she could tell he was looking at her with some mix of confusion and discomfort. She swallowed the final notes of the rehearsal song, and said, still looking up at him, "The echos were driving me crazy everywhere else in the room..."

"Ah," he said somewhat stiffly. "I thought perhaps you'd gotten into the liquor cabinet." His joke met with silence, and then he followed up, in what seemed like an attempt to lighten it, "It's half seven; high time for an aperitif in most civilized parts of the world."

His eyes flicked across her for the briefest of seconds and widened - and then she could see the exposed half of his forehead crease rapidly, as he seemed to try and force himself to only look at her eyes. She realized slowly, with something that felt surprisingly like power - he was uncomfortable seeing her lying on the bed.

"No," she said, sitting up and turning around to sit cross legged. She tried to get comfortable again, stretching a bit and eventually resting her head on her hand. "I was busy trying to get back into form and trying to get you to accept my olive branch... I'm glad you finally heard me and did."

He furrowed his brow gently, and seemed confused.

"The room is soundproof," he said hesitantly. "I came in because I was... sorry."

"Oh..." and then she struggled to find the right words, before finally giving up. "I'm surprised, I guess," she said, genuinely meaning it.

He smiled faintly, "As am I."

A long moment, there, and she felt herself inhale and exhale nearly in time with his own breathing, falling into step with him once again, unable to break eye contact... before she finally willed herself to say, "You get so mad at me for not having chosen yet... but Erik, it's your temper that makes me afraid of you."

He flinched subtly, his eyes closing, and he began responding before they were fully open again, "I wish it were that simple."

"It's the _truth_. I'm not afraid of your face. I'm afraid of the way you act when you're angry." The words came out now, all in a rush, and she knew that she was inviting another argument and she didn't care. Better to speak her mind and have it out now, then to spend an awkward evening in a tiny room together. "You're so kind one minute and then you change so quickly... it scares me. I'm sorry."

His eyes were trained on hers, unblinking, and she couldn't tell if he was about to explode in a fresh rage, or in a lament - but he eventually just shook his head, as though she'd said something terribly naive, and said, his mind clearly elsewhere, "That's kind of you to say."

She was staring at the floor by then, worn out at her inability to predict him, when Erik said, "You must be feeling a bit claustrophobic by now. Would you like a small change of scenery?"

...And it sounded like an olive branch of his own.

**XXXXXXXX**

Narrow stairs without a railing, followed by a thin metal catwalk ten feet above the various air-conditioning units and other machinery below; they appeared to be walking along the inside perimeter of the top level of the skyscraper, headed toward the acute angle formed at the corner of the building where two sides came together. Christine did her best to navigate the pitfalls of the precarious walkway, but it was almost unnecessary; Erik felt like a net of security walking behind her, carefully monitoring her steps and pointing out every hazardous turn or gap in the metal grating.

Finally the sharp interior corner of the building was only a half-dozen steps ahead of them, and Christine could have almost touched both walls on either side of her, if she had stretched out her hands.

"I'll need to turn off the flashlight now - don't walk any further" Erik said, and the small beam of light at their feet went dark. She looked down and to the left and saw his phone illuminated in the darkness as he rapidly typed something into it.

"Who are you calling?" she asked, more teasing than wondering.

"Patience," he murmured, and his tone was finally warm again. "I'm just sending a command to the building's central control system. This should only take a moment... Have you ever heard of electrochromic glass? ...It's a remarkable substance; pass a differential voltage across it and the nano-crystalline film coating the exterior surface will change opacity. Meaning what once was a wall... one moment..."

And then she was surrounded by dazzling light.

"...becomes a window," came the satisfied voice, very close to her ear, now.

It was like being in a forest of high rises, the glowing towers scattered out around her on all sides, stretching toward the black horizon of the night sky. The sheer number of them was dizzying - thousands and thousands, filling her field of view. The collective light from the buildings glowed almost blue, pinpointed at intervals by blinking red lights at the corners of buildings.

"What are the red lights for?" she asked, knowing he would be to pleased be able to tell her.

"Aircraft warning beacons. Prevents lost planes from dropping too low."

There were so many of the beacons that each red point seemed to fade out just as a dozen around it were fading back in, and eventually Christine let her eyes relax out of focus on the skyline, noticing instead the few drops of rain on the surface of the glass before her. The city became streaks and glows behind the scattered raindrops, and the red warning beacons switching on and off atop the skyscrapers were a rising and falling rhythm... it almost seemed like the landscape of Tokyo before her was breathing...

"It's... beautiful," she finally said, surprised to hear her own voice break.

"Yes," he said, sounding distant, or maybe just wistful. "It is."

In a perfect world, in an easy world, she could have taken his hand gently, and held it.

To look out across the glowing metropolis from the viewpoint of a tower that Erik himself had dreamt, and designed, and brought into existence - it felt like triumph. It was humbling to stand beside a person who had accomplished so much, who was capable of almost anything - and who somehow, inexplicably, wanted only her. In a perfect world Christine could have slipped her hand into his and shared the moment of affection, without him demanding a life-long certainty... and without the uncomfortable feeling that it was a betrayal of the other man who was probably sick with worry about her at this very moment.

She turned to face one of the windows and pressed her hands against it, and then gradually her forehead. Her breath fogged the glass, and she closed her eyes.

**XXXXXXXX**

Forty-eight hours later, Christine had read two books, eaten five small meals of canned, dried, or otherwise preserved food, and had been able to get a wonderful amount of sleep - somewhat to her own surprise, even with Erik in the room. When she had first dragged the armchair back in and insisted that he sleep in the peace and quiet of the safe room instead of outside amidst the incessant noise of the fans and mechanical systems, he had resisted, without giving a single actual rationale or reason why it made any sense to have a secret room that was only benefiting one of them. Telling Erik she would feel safer with him in the room had finally changed his mind... and as he turned the chair to face away from the bed where she would be sleeping, she had a better idea of what his actual concern was.

His desire and her confliction were palpable forces in the small space. Every word, every almost-touch was charged and the sensation of walking a tightrope - of needing to walk a precise, narrow line of behavior and words, or to falter and fall completely, irrevocably - was always in the back of her mind, but she pushed it down in favor of other concerns.

Erik's bullet wound was healing steadily, and yet Christine still found herself preoccupied with his recovery; laying out bandages and asking how he was doing, watching subtly to see if he was flinching as he moved around the small space. It was the only time when she felt completely unrestricted in their interactions - unburdened by caution or worries about sending the wrong signal - and it felt strangely like relief.

In some senses it was uncomfortable to be confined to such a small room; to be unable to go anywhere and to have everything from food to reading material be limited by whatever Erik had thought to provision years ago when he'd built this space. And yet as one day rolled into the next with relative calm between the two of them, the limits of the room began to feel like barriers against the outside world; at times, it almost felt like the one place on earth where nothing was demanded of her.

It was an absurd thing to think - she knew with certainty that Erik desired far more than the polite accord that was currently between them. But if she acknowledged only what he actually said, only what he actually asked - then he was asking nothing of her she couldn't give. After weeks of sobbing through conversations with Raoul about his plans to free her forever, after weeks of the managers and the FBI agents and everyone else she encountered trying to move her around like a pawn, all on top of rehearsals and costume fittings and chorus members hissing cruel remarks... this room where all she had to do was _exist_ was almost a refuge from what her life had become.

The hiss of pain as Erik stood up was slight, but she noticed it immediately. "You're wincing," she said. "Does it hurt again?"

"Saying 'yes' would imply the pain had ever stopped." He smiled grimly, "it's just going to mild agony for a few days; these things always are."

Ignoring for the moment why he would know that, she asked feebly, "Do you want some... ibuproffen?"

He chuckled dismissively, but followed up gently, "Painkillers have to be significantly stronger than that before they do me any good, I'm afraid. Some of the more sophisticated opioids work well... but I have to watch myself around them."

"You sound like Meg talking about carbs." Christine said, scoffing good-naturedly. "I couldn't imagine you had to watch yourself around anything... You're more in control than anyone else I've ever met."

His visible eyebrow raised.

He said nothing, but the moment grew exceptionally uncomfortable, as his unwavering gaze remained on her, not a word actually uttered, but his expression clearly replying, "_Seriously_."

She broke eye contact, nearly squirming against the intensity, and looked down.

"I _have_ to be," he said flatly.

"You think you do," she replied, before thinking consciously what she meant to convey, and then faltered, "...but ...I wish you didn't."

"What I _think_," he said coolly - then seemed to halt himself and switch to a more genteel approach, "...is that we have had quite enough of this conversation for today. What would you like for dinner, my dear?"

"I'd like…" she hesitated, and without worrying about the specifics, just spoke honestly, "I'd just like for us to just be ourselves around one another and not to have to worry about walking on eggshells and holding back."

"As the one of us privy to the thoughts in my head, let me assure you, holding back is the only option" he said, with politeness stretched taut over the unyielding sentiment below, manners strained to the breaking point, commanding that the subject was closed. But the obvious discomfort in his tone had the unexpected side effect of making her wonder what could be so terrible...

"Why don't you tell me, and let me judge for myself what I do and do not want?" She tilted her chin up, feigning the physical confidence to match words that were uncertain the moment they left her mouth.

It was so rare, to see him speechless... but it took only a few moments for him to gather his wits and cooly reply, "What is this, morbid curiosity?"

"It's not... morbid."

"You're far too old to be naive about these things." HIs eyes flared, but they seemed to be trying to read her as much as she was trying to read him. "What do you want? To feel some thrill of power that I desire you and have to expend considerable energy to keep from ever touching you? To know the specifics and decide if my libido is as demented as my visage? The truth of the matter is, I wouldn't even have to tell you a single salacious detail. All I would have to say is that I love you, and what I _want_ is to marry you - and even those noble sentiments are enough to fill you with horror."

As calmly as she could manage, tears threatening to spill and chin quivering, Christine replied, "...Please stop telling me what I feel."

"I'm telling you what I see, and what I cannot ever erase from my mind. Even if I couldn't see your blatant revulsion, I can see my own face in the mirror, and know what anyone would feel toward me."

"Your eyes deceive you." She threw the words out, bitterly, defeated, on the verge of crying again because surely this was turning into another argument - but she couldn't back down again.

He said nothing in response but just looked at her with an expression she couldn't read in his eyes.

A long minute passed, before he finally straightened his shoulders. "I forget that you are not as used to immuring situations as I am; this confinement must be muddling your thoughts. Would you like to go out for dinner?" He asked, as if the choice were as casual to go out to the neighborhood bistro or stay in and order pizza - and the absurdity of the statement, of the rapid fire changes in his temperament, were such that she nearly laughed, in spite of the patronizing tone with which he'd begun his response, in spite of the intensity of their exchange just seconds before.

"Is it... safe?" she eventually asked, not really knowing what the word would even mean. Had Agent Khan followed them to Asia? Would the citizens of Tokyo recognize them as fugitives? Funny, to think so naturally of them both being fugitives, instead of as a fugitive and his victim...

"While you've been perusing the library and catching up on sleep, I've been monitoring the manhunt."

"How?"

He chuckled, and she thought fleetingly how melodious even the most casual sounds were, when he was pleased with something.

"Little-known secret outside the software industry is that the privatized email systems written by contract agencies are generally significantly less secure than the options available to the public. Think of it this way - the great software engineers become dotcom millionaires. The mediocre ones get good at scare tactics and sales pitches, then cater to the government. Lazy coders leave back doors lying around the software out of incompetence, or so they can come in and do maintenance later. And a digital means of entry is as intriguing a challenge to me as a physical one..." He shrugged. "I believe I mentioned to you once, I am exceptionally fond of trap doors."

"Agent Khan's emails say they're not in Tokyo, then?"

"Not even close," he replied with confident amusement. "I've been biding my time on venturing out, simply because every additional day gave us more time for news stories to drop off the front page, more time for people to forget - but truth be told, the media frenzy over your disappearance was largely contained to North America."

"...Was?" she asked, the word itself a tipping point in everything she had lived in the last few days - and uncertainty seeped in as she wondered whether to feel liberated or forgotten.

"The world is full of disasters and distractions," Erik said knowingly. "The reporters seem to be moving on. The investigation will continue until they've exhausted the budget your government is willing to spend, and if that hotheaded young man is even half-earnest, he'll be contacting K&R and hostage retrieval firms in the private sector for some months to come. But more and more in the coming weeks, it will only be the agents and officers we need to avoid; the average citizens won't know or care who we are."

"That makes me feel…" She had no idea. "Safer, I guess."

"Good," he said, with surprising tenderness, before returning to a tone of voice that sounded more apropos for military tactical discussions. "Then I've accomplished what I intended, here. But it won't be entirely easy. Digital surveillance is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to facilitate than physically sending agents to investigate, and will go on far longer. Both of us will need to be excessively careful about which phone lines we use for the forseeable future, and standard email will probably never again be an option. Prism and Carnivore are the tip of the iceberg in terms of the current world state of intrusive monitoring of electronic communications…"

He made a gesture of exasperation, as though this were something they both knew and mutually loathed. Trying to stay focused on the facts, she asked, "So… what does that mean, in terms of everyday life?"

"Would you like a long lecture about deep packet inspection and transport layer security fingerprinting… or would you rather I just show you the magnificent technology for evading it, so we can leave this room all the quicker?"

"What if you just tell me what I need to know in an emergency - but you can tell me all the details later?" Christine asked, unable to resist a light smile, at giving the answer she knew would make him happy.

"…You're taking to my world remarkably well," he murmured affectionately, before turning to reach into one of his bags.

"This," he said, placing a smooth black usb drive into her hand, "is a shortcut. The software on it is public and open source, and if you ever need it again, you can get it from one of several hundred mirror hosts. But in an crisis, having it locally might save you a few minutes. It's an anonymity network, with a decidedly unsophisticated name," he said, his lip curling as he said it aloud, "but the software itself is extremely elegant. It relays your internet traffic through a successive series of anonymous hosts, so the source and destination are obscured. The email client is a hidden service on the network, and if you use the appropriate encryption of the message itself, no one will be able to infer the geolocation of the sender besides the intended recipient. If we ever, ever become separated, this is the way that you can be guaranteed to contact me."

"Separated?" she said, surprised at the alarm in her own voice.

"It's a large planet," he said, as though it were a longstanding personal frustration, "And I am not a particularly patient man when it comes to your safety. I will always find you; I will always make sure you're safe… but if you ever wanted to facilitate that process, I wouldn't particularly mind."

"Ok," she said, a bit overwhelmed, "What's the address, once I have the hidden message service?"

"Ah," he said, his temperament lightening as it always did when he discussed one of his accomplishments, "I'm rather proud of this one. The address is the nineteen-digit serial number that is laser engraved on the girdle of the diamond in the pretty little ring I gave you.

She blinked, looking down at the stone. "I don't see how that's possible."

"It's there. You'll need to use a magnifying loupe to read it - there's one in your suitcase, or you can go to a jeweler under the pretense of having the stone cleaned. Then buy a new laptop, install the software, and contact me immediately. If we are in sufficiently extreme circumstances that I cannot find you myself, time will very much be of the essence."

"You keep using that phrase. 'Extreme circumstances.'"

He shrugged. "It's all I've ever known."

Before she could ponder that further, he went on, "This is the only safe means of communication. You must have that number."

"So," she said, examining the stone and trying to see the engraving with her bare eyes, "That's why you said I must never take the ring off"

"…Yes," he said, looking away from her, his shields visibly up again. "Precisely."

**XXXXXXXX**

**Hello dear readers!**

**The more I write for these two, the more I find there is to write - this chapter was supposed to take them to an entirely different continent, but I found there was so much still to be worked out before they even left the room. Oh, those complex emotions. **

**Hopefully this chapter is satisfying for the readers who had been getting frustrated with Christine's indecision so far. She's getting stronger and more confident, but she has a ways to go before she could possibly meet Erik on equal terms, and I'm still aiming for that; I think it's a more powerful choice if she's capable and confident when she chooses. (Although getting these characters to the point of a relationship that even approaches "healthy" in the eyes of a modern reader is a significant challenge. :-)**

**And for my technical readers, yes: I'm alluding to the software here rather than mentioning it by name - it's gotten a lot of bad press lately and I'd rather avoid tech politics - but suffice it to say, I think it can be an incredibly useful tool for good people who find themselves in bad situations. I've taken a few other liberties to streamline the narrative (assume offscreen PGP key exchanges, etc) but otherwise, as always, the details are researched and as real as I can make them. (And if you find a glitch, I'd love to know.)**

**New background photos are up as well, for those who would like to see a bit more of this world,**** at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com or veroniqueclaire*livejournal*com . **

**Thank you so much for your wonderful, insightful, heartfelt, witty and enthusiastic reviews - I love to hear everything you're thinking, and truly - truly - your reviews are the thing that motivates me to write, so even a quick word is encouraging. **

**~Ver**


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